I DID IT!!!

 I FINALLY DID IT!!! After 6 years of off and on practice, I now can say that CW is my new favorite mode.

Easter Activity 2023

 Hi everyone, long time no see as usual.

Well, the semester is winding down finally, I've got about 2 or 3 weeks of school left. And boy, do you know what I'm doing once I get out of here... at least for the summer.

Over the Easter weekend, I thought I'd take my FT-891 and Chameleon TD LTE antenna out for some activation. We had Easter at my dad's family's in Bethany, Missouri (if you don't know where that's at, it's east of my QTH off of I-35). My young and curious cousin, Alex, also tagged along. He is into CB radios right now so I figured I'd expose him to ham radio while I was over there.

Alex seemed pretty interested while setting up my antenna and putting together my radio. While setting up, he asked how big the antenna was, and I told him 120 feet. Surprise was an understatement - he couldn't believe that there was an antenna that long! My grandparents had an old windmill about 10 feet high, so I mounted the center near the top using some paracord. It seemed to work fine and I might use it again if needed.

A Great Day for Ham Radio

Yesterday couldn't have gone any better than it did - I made two SSB contacts using only 10W of power and a wet noodle!

The first station I called was a special station. K3S is based on the world's first nuclear-powered boat, the Savannah. Savannah is currently docked and decommissioned near Baltimore, Maryland, and is recognized as a National Historic Landmark. According to the K3S QRZ page, January 28th is a significant day:

"Radio Operator Jack Binns sent a CQD (former SOS) message from [the] RMS Republic on January 23, 1909, after Republic was rammed by the Italian liner SS Florida. Republic subsequently sank, but Binns' CQD and continuous wireless work [resulted in] a successful rescue of all aboard except two killed in the collision."

It took me 3 tries to get through to K3S. The station's operator was Ted and he gave me a much-improved signal rating of 5x3. He was coming in around 5x8 or so. It was really amazing to work this station due to the special occasion, but at the same time, I also was just scanning around the bands. K3S held a QSO with me on 21.3137.

Later, towards the end of the day, I called CQ on 15m again. As soon as I sent out my third CQ call, N1IIC came right back. Fortunately, he told me that I was extremely modulated, which means my mic gain was too much. It's not very nice to overmodulate, so I turned it down. I guess you really don't need that much mic gain even for 10W. He came in at a 5x5. N1IIC QSOed with me on 21.3680. We had a good talk, I told him where my QTH was at and that I had been hearing RTTY on every band I was on. January 28th was also when the British Isles were hosting a RTTY contest, which took over almost every band. It's so beautiful to hear so many RTTY stations.

In addition to this, I will be updating my station (again!) with another radio provided by HRO - the Yaesu FT-891. If you haven't heard the news already, Yaesu is discontinuing the FT-817/818 line of radios. This looks like a good replacement for the cost as you will get 100W out in a smaller package. 

Until then, stay tuned for a review!