BearCreekHam

From 5/1

Spartan Sprint
The first Monday of every month the Adventure Radio Society holds a two hour long contest, the Spartan Sprint. I had wanted to do it last month, but some family commitment or another got in the way.

This month I got a kitchen pass, and was good to go. The original concept was to set up in some park or another and operate from outside. However real life intervened, the hours ran out, so I decided to operate QRP from my home station, but using the FT-817 instead of the Icom-706.

Yeah right. The FT-817 was OK, but it was getting KILLED by QRN/QRM. So I punted back to the Icom 706 with the power turned all the way down.

My goal going in to my first Spartan Sprint, (and first real contest outside of field day) was ONE contact.

I started on 15m. Not much happening. Tried 40m and 20m. Boy those folks are sending FAST. Signals aren't too bad. Finally found a clear station that I could JUST BARELY copy. KL7CW. I botched the exchange the first time, but got it right the second time.
With that under my belt I started looking for my second contact of the contest. Came back to a station, but he has looking for a normal QSO rather than a contest contact.

Being the rawchewer that I am, I punted on the last 15 minutes of the contest to have a nice long QSO with Stan NY6G, from Alameda, CA.

Anyhow. I was basically pretty clueless on the contest, but learned a little. Having gotten over the initial hump, I'll shoot for 10 contacts next month.

Also, firmly determed that manual antenna tuning really bites during contests...

Finally as I was recovering for the evening I also had another good rag chew with Dave W6NFU, from Saugus, CA.

From 4/30

The loop adventure
I've been wanting to put up another antenna for a long while. I inally settled on a 1/2 wave vertical antenna for 40m. 1/2 wave verticals "in theory" don't need radials. Since I don't have a lot of room for radials that seemed like a good idea.

The plan was to shoot a line over the oak tree on my property and suspend the 1/2 wave vertical from the top of the tree. I figured that if the feedpoint was elevated I might even get away with 4 short radials to make it a 1/4 wave on 80m too.

So after a couple of abortive shots with the slingshot, I get the line over the perfect top of the tree. But I also got a nice branch about half way up going up and another one about halfway down on the way down.

Looking up at the configuration, I had a perfect set up for a diamond, vertical loop. It needed to be about 140 feet in circumference in order to be reasonant on 40m. Unfortunately it wound up 25 feet short of being able to "close the loop."

So?

So I put the additional 25 feet in and hope that it plays OK. I haven't been able to characterize the antenna yet, but the antenna tuner loads it up and it seems to have a couple of dB over the G5RV Jr on 20m. "It works"

Evening contact
Fate favored me with a nice contact on Sunday evening. Roy, WQ9Z, from Il was an excellent FISTS ambassador. I've been meaning to join FISTS ever since my initial abortive attempt to learn CW more than a year ago. I'll join the next time I sit down to write checks. The FISTS folks have an even higher percentage of "good folks" than the CW community at large.

My "old fashioned" ham goal
Deep down at heart I'm a people person. I love to ragchew. Neither the DX or contest bugs have bitten yet.

On the other hand I love doing public events. The Adventure Radio Society seems like the "bee's knees" to me. Frankly, I like Field Day better than I like Christmas. No... REALLY!

So other than to use CW for QRP "out in the field" I didn't really have a ham related goal for it. Now I do.

Working All States, CW only. It is a good "old school" ham goal. It will help me get serious about logging and QSL cards. (Which I also *love* to send out...)

So, now I have two goals...

Goal #1: 500 CW contacts. One per day, two on weekends.
Goal #2: Worked All States using only CW.

That should keep me off the streets!

73 de WyreRider