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K3WWP's Diary - Latest item is
always at the top Go to SkyDrive to see pictures Go to Flickr to see pictures Email feedback on the diary NAQCC Web Site Thursday, May 08, 2008 10:25 PM - I received an email from Lee WA8QFE about QSLing. He wonders why more folks aren't using the on-line QSL services - Logbook of the World (LotW) and eQSL. Personally I use both of them despite the fact that I think nothing will ever replace the thrill of receiving hard copy QSL's via regular mail. And I don't mean the printed copies of the eQSL's. I mean the regular old fashioned QSL cards that we used to send back in the 1960's for just a single 4 cent stamp, and most of the ones we sent we got a reply to without having to send a SASE, return postage, IRC, green stamp, etc. Nowadays sending that QSL card via regular mail costs 27 cents per card, and that may jump another penny the middle of this month sometime. I know regular first class mail is going from 41 to 42 cents, but I haven't checked to see if the postcard rate is also going up. Anyway I digressed from what I started to talk about, but the digression was important because it shows why on-line QSLing is becoming more and more popular and will continue to do so as the Postal Service prices sending postcards or QSL cards out of reach of many folks on limited incomes and the like. I think all hams should sign up for either or both of the LotW and eQSL services. Both are free services although eQSL has many additional features for which they charge a not-too-small fee. Personally I believe LotW to be the better and more secure of the two systems, and I consider a verification obtained that way to be the equivalent of a regular QSL card. I now include such verifications in my awards tables in the Awards section of the web site. eQSL's are also quite good and have what may be to some a very important additional feature. There is actually an on-line QSL card shown for every match that may be printed out by the user. Personally I save each eQSL as a digital file on my extra 500 GB hard drive and on CD. I don't waste the ink or paper to print them out. I should clarify that a bit. I save one QSL per station per band, not each and every one. I don't need 32 40M eQSL's from the same station - one will do. If you haven't explored these two on-line services, you may be interested to see what you will find there. You may have many many eQSL's or 'matches' (as the LotW verifications are called) waiting for you once you sign up and upload your log file. In fact you can check without signing up to see how many eQSL's you have waiting. Just go to the QSLing section of my web site, and scroll down the main page to find an eQSL form where you can type in your call and submit it to get a list of your eQSL's. Go to http://www.eqsl.cc/qslcard/ to find out about eQSL's and the ARRL web site at http://www.arrl.org/lotw/ for more info on the LotW. -30- Wednesday, May 07, 2008 10:43 AM - UPDATE!! - I said yesterday was a nondescript day. What's the opposite of nondescript? Whatever it is, today was that day. As I said earlier in today's entry, I was going fishing. Well I helped a neighbor before going, and that dragged out for a while, but that was a blessing in the end. I went fishing about an hour later than I would have otherwise. And just before I was ready to quit after getting only the same sneaky bites I got yesterday, I saw something pulling on my line in earnest. I picked up the pole and knew right away I had something big on. I got a glimpse of it, and it didn't look like anything I was familiar with right away. We battled for a few minutes, and I still wasn't sure what it was. I knew about 15 kinds of fish it WASN'T. Then after making my way down a short steep embankment to get closer to the water's edge, I got the fish in close to shore and saw now just what it WAS. It was a Muskellunge or Muskie. The dream fish of any angler. It was hooked right at the back end of its huge mouth away from the sharp teeth which is why I was able to land it since I only had my regular line on, and not the steel leader you generally need to catch a Muskie. Just as I got him on shore he did somehow get the line in his teeth and bit right through it. I did get to measure him and handle him though before releasing him. He was 36 inches long, which besides being the first Muskie I ever caught, was also the biggest fish I've ever caught. That eclipsed the 33 inch Carp I got last year. WOW! I'm still excited after a couple hours now. The bait? Just a small red worm from Ange's garden. Although I've been interested in astronomy almost all my life and radio as well, I don't recall ever hearing of the massive "Carrington Flare" on the Sun which occurred on September 1, 1859. I found the following article about it via one of my astronomy RSS feeds in IE8. http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/06may_carringtonflare.htm. Perhaps you will also find it intriguing, as I did. You may notice that the time stamp is back on my diary entries. I've abandoned the Alleycode HTML editor and gone back to HTML-Kit again. I found I could take some of the features I liked in Alleycode and adapt HTML-Kit to emulate them. It's another nice day, so I'm shutting down here at the computer and getting myself outside for some walking, fishing, etc. -30- Tuesday, May 6, 2008 - Kind of a nondescript day today. Nothing really unusual, different, or exciting going on. I just did some run of the mill stuff, like walking, fishing (well at least that was mildly exciting as I caught my first fish in about 10 days), some work around the house, and so on. The fish I caught was a bit unusual. Or at least the way I caught it. After fishing for an hour and 45 minutes with only some sneaky bites on my red worms, I was ready to quit. When I picked up my pole to reel in and shut down, there was a fish on the line. I never saw any bites. The fish just hooked himself and sat out there without moving. I've had that happen before, but mostly with carpsuckers who do that from time to time. This was a sucker though, and I don't recall ever catching one of them that way. That's 10 fish for the year now, still my second best total as of a May 6th. About 10 years ago, I had 16 fish at this time of year. So at least getting some bites today and catching the 'non biting' sucker is encouraging. Maybe after the 10 day lull, things are going to start picking up again. I'll probably go again tomorrow to see if that's true or not. Oh, I almost forgot, Don WA3ZBJ emailed me today and told me that I was mentioned in a U-Tube video. Well, I watched it, and had I blinked at the wrong time, I would have missed seeing myself, but I am really there, albeit briefly. If you want to take a look, you'll at least be treated to a lot of beautiful scenery, and two hams constantly saying how well QRP works. It's at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1oOU0eL24w. -30- Monday, May 5, 2008 - I built my switching setup for the RF attenuator today, and now I can switch easily between 5 watts and 930 milliwatts output. However only on 160-30 meters for now. Still have to figure out how to switch in the pad for the other bands without making things overly complicated. Perhaps the easiest way to do it might be just to build another pad and use another switch for those bands. Anyway it was a lot of fun actually building something again, even though it was just something simple. Other than that, most of the day was spent outside. I walked about 8.5 miles today. I went up to the beautiful Buttermilk Falls area I talked about here in the diary a few weeks ago. A friend of mine went with me, and he really enjoyed the scenery up there. I took some more pictures also. You may recall the last time I went there, my camera batteries were low and I didn't get all the pictures I wanted. I also learned a little about some wildflowers and birds from my friend who is a real nature lover. Here's a picture of the falls themselves. Not a Niagara by any means, but still very beautiful, I think.  -30- Sunday, May 4, 2008 - I am so glad there is a NAQCC. I owe all the delightful time I had this weekend to the NAQCC and the May mW Challenge. Without that, I would have missed out on making 119 QSO's in the NE, CH, W7, and IN QSO Parties this weekend. I'd probably have just used one of the parties for my daily streak QSO and that would have been it. So in my case for sure, the basic purpose of the NAQCC in getting hams to be more active on CW certainly applies. What a ball I had. Thanks NAQCC. I'm now up to 45 states worked with mW power. I was rolling toward a mW WAS back in the 90's, then I got the TS-570 with its minimum 5 watts power output, and got away from mW work except for a couple brief times using Eric KB3BFQ's QRP+. More about Eric in a moment. However as I mentioned earlier in the diary, I finally built an RF attenuator and now am back into mW work with a vengeance. HI. I just have the attenuator clipped in now. I'm going to build a switching device so I can easily go from 5 watts to the 930mW I get with the attenuator. Maybe tomorrow or Tuesday, I'll get to that. Also because of the way I switch antennas here, right now I can only use it on 160-30M. I'll have to figure out how to switch it in for 20-10M also some time. An equally delightful thing happened this weekend. Eric emailed me and said he made his first QSO since getting back on the air a few days ago. I think that pleased me just as much as all the mW work I did this weekend. Eric has his own diary or (ughh) 'blog' now about his ham radio activities. It's at http://kb3bfq.blogspot.com/. Take a look -30- Saturday, May 3, 2008 - I'm having a lot of fun with my new homebrew RF attenuator. According to my math, my output power with the attenuator was 990 milliwatts. I wanted to make sure I was below 1 watt, so I lowered the resistance in the leg of the T a bit, and recalculated the power as now being 930 milliwatts. I've made 16 mW QSO's so far in our NAQCC challenge. 15 of them today in about 25 minutes or so in the IN and MARAC contests. I worked everyone I called very easily with the exception of two stations who didn't seem to hear me at all. I think the one QRT just before I called though, as I never heard him again despite the fact he was quite strong when I did hear him. Although I know QRP and QRPp does work well, I must admit I was a bit surprised at the easy way I was making QSO's. Even the mobiles were copying me easily. I didn't have to repeat my info a single time. I hope a lot more of you are going down into the mW range for our NAQCC May Challenge. It certainly has been a joy for me to be operating QRPp again. I should have built the attenuator a long time ago. Now maybe I'll get back to working on my QRPp WAS and DXCC again. -30- Friday, May 2, 2008 - IMPORTANT RIP-OFF INFO. I received a letter in the mail today from The W5YI VEC, Inc. offering to renew my amateur radio license for a fee of $7.00. Now why should I pay them $7.00 to do something I can do on-line for free. The FCC does not charge a fee for license renewals except for vanity calls. I do not hold a vanity call, therefore I will renew my license for FREE on the FCC web site when I get within the 90 day pre-expiration period a few days from now. Here are pertinent excerpts from the license renewal instructions on the ARRL web site: "Amateur applications can be filed manually using paper forms or electronically over the Internet. Amateurs may electronically renew their FCC-issued licenses "on line" via the FCC web using FCC ULS . FCC permits on-line renewals at 90 days or less before a license will expire, and when the license has expired but is still within the two-year grace period for renewal. Licenses that have been expired for more than two years are not eligible for renewal or reinstatement. If you have a Vanity License renewal, remember to have your credit card accessible to pay the FCC Regulatory Fee." And further on: "For a complete list of FCC filing instructions and filing fees go to the ARRL page Instructions for License Renewals or Changes. NOTE: Other than for Vanity license applications, all FCC license application actions are FREE." (my emphasis added) It saddens me to think that many hams will not be aware they can renew for free, and will waste $7.00 in response to letters like the one I received. If the enclosed envelope were a post-paid envelope I would write back and tell them what I think of their scheme. You have to be very careful in this day and age and examine very closely anything that says they will do something for you for only a few (sometimes many) bucks. I hope this entry helps at least a few people to save a few hard earned dollars. -30- Thursday, May 1, 2008 - Spring is back again after a couple cold days. It got down to 32 this morning, then warmed nicely to 70 by late afternoon. Nice enough to go fishing, which I did, but only got one tiny nibble the whole hour I was there. I've been going to do this since I got my Kenwood TS-570D back in 1999, and I finally got around to it. I built an RF attenuator to cut my 5 watts in the 570 (now the 480) back to less than 1 watt. I dug out a formula for a T attenuator, designed one to cut power by 7db which is approximately what is needed to go from 5 watts to something in the 900 mW range. Then I hunted up the correct value carbon resistors from my junk box. Of course I didn't have exactly what I needed so I had to connect some in series and some in parallel to get close to the values. Then I put it together and clip leaded it between my 480 and my tuner. I still have to get my RF meter back from a loan to see just exactly what my power output is, but it should be somewhere just below 1 watt. I made one QSO so far at that power level, working W9OTE on 40M early this evening. What motivated me to finally do this? The NAQCC May Milliwatt challenge. Our NAQCC activities certainly serve their purpose in my case. That is getting me to be more active on the bands. I think without the NAQCC, I would just about every day get on just long enough to get my streak QSO, then QRT. But with the NAQCC, I manage to squeeze in more air time to master the challenges, work on the club awards, operate our sprints, etc. Other than that, I spent about 3-4 hours on the phone helping with computer problems. I sometimes think I should be a support person for some computer company. Only then I'd go completely crazy because there are few things harder than trying to explain something about computers over the phone when you can't see what's going on at the person's computer, and they are incapable of describing it in a way that is understandable. And that pretty much tired me out for the day, so I'm going to just close this entry now, and listen to some OTR comedy show to relax. -30- Wednesday, April 30, 2008 - Thoughts from Geoff W1OH on my 'spotting' comments of yesterday: "Hi John, I have to agree with you about Internet spotting and particularly your statement "I believe that takes all the fun and satisfaction out of the hunt". Exactly my thought when I "discovered" spotting some years ago after getting back into active ham radio operation! There's nothing quite like tuning the CW segments and coming across some needed station on his first CQ! That's part of the magic! 73, geoff - W1OH" Finding a station on the first CQ is often the only way a minimalist QRPer can work a very rare DX station. Because with spotting, there will be a huge pile after that rare DX works a few stations and he is 'spotted'. Of course it is fun also to break a huge pileup with a minimal QRP signal. A very skilled operator can do it by studying the pileup, anticipating the DX station's next move, and timing his call perfectly. I get a thrill out of doing that. Admittedly it doesn't happen often as those KW/beam signals just put out too strong a signal in pileups. -30- Tuesday, April 29, 2008 - St. Bart's or St. Barthelemy, however you say it, I finally got it last night. I was looking around 30M for my daily streak QSO, and heard this station on 10.106.6 working stations, but never signing his call. I hung around out of curiosity to see who it was. I knew it wasn't YV5OIE, 6Y5WJ, PZ5RA, or the other regulars I hear on 30M, since I know their keying and operating patterns. This had to be someone different. After working about 5 more stations, he finally signed FJ/DJ2VO. I knew he had to be operating split since St. Bart's is still pretty rare as a 'new' country. So I set up the 480 for split and parked on about 10.107.7 for my transmit frequency, and called after he completed each QSO. After only about 4 minutes, he came back with K3?, I sent K3WWP once more, and bingo, after an exchange of RST's, I had country or entity #206 in my QRP/CW/simple wire antenna collection. Now I could have gotten FJ a lot sooner had I used packet or Internet spotting, or even announced DXpedition info. However I believe that takes all the fun and satisfaction out of the hunt. I have only used any kind of spotting once in all the DX stations I've worked. That was for V51AS on 30M. I was talking to a ham friend on the Internet and he mentioned V51AS was spotted on such and such a frequency on 30M, and we wondered if I could work him. So I went to my shack, tuned to the announced frequency, and did work him. I believe that was a new band country, but I had worked Namibia before. Other than that all my DX QSO's have come from just tuning around the band - hunting - for them. Nothing against anyone who uses spotting, but it is just not for me. To me, spotting seems akin to stocking a small barrel with some hungry fish, and catching my fish that way. Or perhaps capturing a deer and putting him in a fenced in area for me to 'hunt' and shoot. There's just no challenge in it. Without the challenge, I get little satisfaction from doing anything, be it working DX, fishing, working a jigsaw puzzle, or a hundred other things. Likewise all but a couple of my 400+ band states worked have come from just randomly tuning around the bands, or in contests. I did make a sked to work Idaho on 80M, and I believe ND on some band, but those are the only ones that I didn't truly hunt down and work. Similarly, that is why I kind of gave up on county hunting. Despite co-founding the CW County Hunters net with WA8EOH back in 1966, I soon realized that the net took a lot of the challenge out of county hunting. I did enjoy the fellowship with so many nice folks the net offered, but I found little satisfaction in working counties that way, especially when we started getting a lot of mobile check-ins to the net. Again it smacked of the 'fishing in a stocked barrel' concept to me. Even further, I used to enjoy following sports a lot more when it was a challenge to find a game on TV or the radio rather than how it is today when virtually every game of every sport is seemingly readily available on TV or the Internet. I remember the fun of following the NCAA basketball tournament when all the games weren't readily available, especially the late West Coast games. You had to search the radio dial, perhaps even the SW bands to find a broadcast of the game. That was how I heard one of my favorite moments from a tournament when Danny Ainge drove the length of the court to give BYU a victory. I guess I'm somewhat akin to the fellow in the commercial who makes his money the old fashioned way - he earns it. I like to 'earn' my accomplishments in life. -30- Monday, April 28, 2008 - We slipped backwards a bit today. After that nice spell of weather, it was decidedly chilly today by comparison. I think the high today didn't get out of the lower 50's after several days in the upper 60's to near 80 or more. In fact it's going to get down near freezing the next couple nights, and I've probably got to cover my tomatoes, although it is supposed to be cloudy and windy which means little chance of frost. Still I'll be on the safe side. I spent a good part of today organizing my collection of Old Time Radio broadcasts which is something I've wanted to do for some time now, but just never seemed to find the time. I don't know how the bands were today. I started a couple times to check them out, but got distracted on the way. So I'll wait till 0000Z for my daily QSO to see what they are like. I took a lot more 'spring' pictures the past couple days and may post them on SkyDrive depending on how many other things I have to do here. I got some nice response to the 26 'spring' pictures I posted several days ago. One especially rewarding comment from a semi-shut-in who said after seeing my pictures, she felt like she really experienced the coming of spring through the pictures even though she couldn't get out to see spring in person at the time. -30- Sunday, April 27, 2008 - A couple more signs that spring is settling in nicely. Folks are abandoning 80M and heading to 40M. 80 was just about dead this evening, and there were many signals on 40M. Also the daily hits on my web site are dropping off as they usually do around this time of year as people discover the joys of being outside again and get away somewhat from their Internet addiction. And that's good. There's nothing like the great outdoors. I walked over 10.5 miles out there today and went fishing for about an hour and a half. Unfortunately the fish must have been on their version of the Internet as all I got were a few nibbles on my red worms, and I couldn't hook any of them. I was hoping to tie or beat my April record of 10 fish, but I've been stuck at 9 for a few trips now. Supposed to rain tomorrow so I probably won't go, unless it stops early enough. Maybe if it does, the carp will come to the sewer outlets this time unlike yesterday. -30- Saturday, April 26, 2008 - DX was good on 20M late this afternoon. I heard several EU stations, some quite strong. I was only looking for the letter 'T' to finish my NAQCC April Challenge with 63 different calls for the 63 letters, so the only one of the stations I worked was IK3VUT, but I probably could have worked several more. Coincidentally that made 15 countries now with the 480. My tomato babies survived their first thunderstorm in fine shape today. We had over 1/2 inch of rain in only several minutes along with some pretty strong wind gusts. Not to mention some powerful lightning strikes, some quite close as the thunder followed in just a fraction of a second which means the strikes were within 1000 feet, probably within a few hundred feet. I figured the heavy rain might bring the carp into the storm sewer runoffs at the river, so I headed there after it stopped, but never got a single bite nor even saw any carp. Maybe they forgot about the sewer deal over the winter and it will take a couple storms for them to remember. -30- Friday, April 25, 2008 - Again a beautiful 'outdoors' day. I planted my tomatoes, so my 'babies' are now on their own in the outside world. Hopefully they are big enough so they won't be bothered by the myriad of garden pests that can attack and sometimes destroy young tomato plants. I had almost a whole crop of 8 or 10 plants wiped out several years ago. I'm still not sure what did it. I also finished(?) trimming my pine tree, at least until it gets its new growth for the year which I'll cut back a bit as usual. But the bottom branches are now either gone or thinned out, and it makes the back yard look a little more spacious and bright now. After that it was off to the river for some more fishing. I caught a nice 15 inch bass on one of the little worms we dug up when unburying the fig trees several days ago. That's one of the bigger bass I've caught over the years. I also had something else on, but he got away. When I got home, Ange called and wanted to do some spading in his garden, so I helped with that. I guess we spaded around 200 square feet or so before he had to leave to go to some meeting. Then I went for a couple walks this evening, and just got home a few minutes ago. In-between walks, I got my QSO for the day along with another DX station - CT1ILT on 30M. When I called CQ on 40M, I got an answer from a WP4 station. After a few repeats, I got his call - WP4DQK, and he was QRP also, so I had a 2X QRP DX QSO for my streak QSO for the 26th. That makes 14 countries now with the 480. -30- Thursday, April 24, 2008 - An outside day today. That's where I spent most of my time, either fishing, walking, or in the yard. I cut my grass for the second time this year already. It sure is growing with the wonderful weather. I also put my tomato plants outside for the first time today to harden them off. I may just go ahead and plant them tomorrow which would be about a week ahead of when I planted last year. No luck fishing today, so my total stays at 8 for the year, but it was just nice to be sitting out in the beautiful weather doing nothing but watching the water go by. I did see one nice fish come to the surface out about 75 feet or so. Looked like a big carp from the glimpse I got of the color, but he never came in closer nor went down to the bottom to get my bait. Tomorrow looks like another nice day although there is a slight chance of a thundershower in the afternoon. Maybe we'll get enough rain to get the carp to come to see what washed in from the storm sewers, and I'll have a little fun. -30- Wednesday, April 23, 2008 - Do you know how to zero beat someone? I mean do you really know how? Well over half of my QSO's are made with hams who answer my CQ off frequency - some by as much as several hundred Hertz. This gives a big opportunity for QRM to happen. Someone could check my frequency while the station I'm working is transmitting, think my frequency is clear and plop down on it - all legitimately. Then when I transmit, I am being QRMed, and the other station can no longer copy me. If the ham had answered my CQ exactly zero beat with me, we wouldn't have that problem. Also if we are not zero beat with each other, we are using up two frequencies of precious spectrum space instead of one. This is an over-simplified explanation I am going into now because I don't want to get over-technical here. There are many other sources where you can delve more deeply into the matter if you wish. Many, if not almost all, modern transceivers work this way. The sidetone that you hear when you are transmitting is equal to the offset frequency of your transceiver. So if your sidetone is set to 600 Hertz for example, when you tune in a station so that you hear him at 600 Hertz, you are then exactly at zero beat with him. Got that? When you hear a station, and your sidetone frequency is set to 600 Hertz, you should tune the station so you hear him at 600 Hertz to be zero beat. If your sidetone is set to 600 Hertz and you tune a station so you hear him at 1000 Hertz, you are going to be 400 Hertz off frequency when you answer him. Now if you like to listen to the station you are working at 1000 Hertz for whatever reason, then read your transceiver manual and set your sidetone to also be 1000 Hertz, then you will have the best of both worlds. You can listen to the station at your preferred tone of 1000 Hertz, AND you will be zero beat with the station. All you really need to do is to match the tone of the station you are working to the sidetone frequency. It's so simple, EXCEPT for those who are 'tone deaf' and honestly are physically unable to tell the difference between 600 and 1000 Hertz or pretty much any other pair of tones. Those folks need some assistance in zero beating. Fortunately many modern transceivers have some means of automatically zero beating a station. Read your manual to see if yours does. There is also a neat little circuit described in the CW section of my web site that can assist in zero beating someone if you are 'tone deaf' and your transceiver can't help you by itself. At any rate, please study the matter of zero beating more if you need to, and practice it until you are as close to perfect as possible. I believe this is why I get so many hams saying they just don't seem to be able to make QSO's with their QRP power. If you run QRP, it is extremely important to zero beat someone when you call them. You are much more likely to be heard than if you call a few hundred Hertz off frequency. A station running a KW will probably be noticed if he is off frequency, but a little 5 watts or less signal may not be. And one final exception. If you are running a crystal controlled transmitter, then you will have to call off frequency in most cases. Then you should send the call of the station you are calling at least 3 or 4 times to give him time to find you, and know you are calling him. -30- Tuesday, April 22, 2008 - A second quiet day in a row here. Quiet enough that I finally got around to uploading a bunch of pictures to SkyDrive. If your a pictures fan, Check out the 'Spring 2008 in Kittanning' folder on my SkyDrive site for 26 new pictures. Also check the 'K3WWP History' folder for the picture I took just before getting my first QSO on day 5000 of the streak. I hope to get some audio of my first QSO to go with the picture some day soon. -30- Monday, April 21, 2008 - Kind of a quiet day for a change. Not a lot to talk about. I went fishing this afternoon and again this evening. Got shutout both times. Too windy in the afternoon, and just fooling with a lure this evening. Those are my excuses. HI. The bands continue good today. Only worked one DX station - CO6WD on 20M, but heard several others I either didn't need or just couldn't work for one reason or another. I'm still impressed and happy with the 480 and its receiving abilities. I helped Ange with a bit more garden work today. We planted some potatoes and beans. I'm thinking of getting my tomatoes outside very soon now. I think I did it last year around the end of April, and may try for about a week earlier this year. They're easy to cover in case we do get a late frost. My lettuce and onions seemed to like the rain yesterday and are noticeably bigger today. And this bit of interesting info about our NAQCC challenges from one of our first-time participants. Mike KC2LYQ says, "I had a great time completing this challenge. This is my first time working on an NAQCC challenge, and it definitely won't be my last. It got me to be much more active than I usually am, and it was one of the best amateur radio experiences I've had so far in my four years of being licensed." That's quite a testimonial for our innovative NAQCC challenges. I hope it may encourage you to give them a try if you're a member and haven't done so yet. -30- Sunday, April 20, 2008 - There's no doubt about it now. My tomato flowers have been successfully pollinated by my "Q-Tip Bee". Looky here:  The other wilted flowers in the picture also bear tomatoes behind them, and my other Siberian plant has a few others as well. Our summer preview is over, and we're back to spring today with temps only in the low 60's or so. We also had a few showers which should help my lettuce and onions. This is certainly a beautiful and wonderful time of year as we say goodby to nasty old winter and look forward to another wonderful summer. The bands also seem to be picking up with the weather. Or perhaps with my new toy, the 480, I'm just getting on the air more to play with it. At any rate I caught a nice special call station on 20M today - XE83IARU, and later worked my first non-contest EU station (other than TF4M) in a long time when I got S59AA on 20M. I also almost worked a HA7, but he only got as far as K3??P. But hey it was nice to get across the pond again outside a contest environment. Mike KC2EGL heard ZL1BYZ on 17M today, but I didn't hear him at all here 30 miles away from Mike. Tonite I've got a sked with Eric KB3BFQ who got his station set up already after getting his equipment from me yesterday. We tried earlier today, but no go as 40 miles is a rough distance in the daytime here, especially at this point in the sunspot cycle and with a 2X QRP QSO. -30- Saturday, April 19, 2008 - Yet another summer preview day - 84 degrees with increasing cloudiness. No time for fishing today. Garden work this morning - all fig trees are now unburied for the season. Had a nice visit with Eric KB3BFQ and his two year old boy, Perry this afternoon. Eric now has all his ham gear back that I'd been keeping for him, and he's anxious to get back on the air again. A couple walks this evening, and in-between, I pretty much finished up my pine tree pruning. The bands were good this evening. I got a quick MI QP QSO for my streak QSO, then tuned around for about a half hour or so and worked a couple DX stations on 30 - PR7AR and YV5OIE, both easy QSO's. I also did some listening on the AM and SW BC bands with the 480 to see how it performs on those bands and modes. I found out it performs quite well. I think the audio quality on AM is better than on the 570. I'm finding my poll this month turning up some interesting responses. If you haven't voted, I hope you will. And one other comment on the web site. I received a 'Teens and CW' report from Cal, K0DXC, and I just finished posting it on the web site. Cal is 13 years old and is already up to 30 WPM on CW, and loving it. Well, I don't want to tell more of his story here - you'll have to read it for yourself. Check the CW section of my web site. One final comment. When Mike KC2EGL was here last week, we discussed one of our many common interests - soccer. Mike said he was going to tape some of the New York Red Bull matches and send the tape to me. I just received an email saying he was now taping the Red Bull-Revolution match, and warned me not to check out any results so as not to spoil my viewing when I get the tape. OK Mike, I'll stay off the MLS web site. And don't any of you soccer fans dare tell me the result either or we won't be friends any longer. HI -30- Friday, April 18, 2008 - Another beautiful spring/summer day, so I did some more work on the pine tree in the back yard among other outdoor activities. I went fishing and was more successful than yesterday. I got a sucker and a carpsucker. That makes 4 fish so far this year and ties for the most fish I've caught by April 18th in any year. So maybe this will be a record breaking fishing year, but there is a long way to go yet, and anything can happen. My friend Eric KB3BFQ is coming to visit tomorrow and I'm looking forward to that. I think the last time I saw him was last July 4th. I think I mentioned he's getting back into ham radio after a several year layoff, and I'm delighted especially since he is a dedicated CW/QRP/simple wire antenna ham just like me. Continuing in no particular order, Ange and I unburied 3 more fig trees today. Those were biggies, and a lot of work. Now just a couple more little ones to go. Thank goodness, although it is good exercise. I'm getting more and more positive my tomato flowers were successfully pollinated. The flowers are starting to wilt a bit now, and that bulge at their base seems to be getting bigger. I still can't actually see any tiny tomatoes yet, but I think they are there. I've been thinking a bit more about my streak and what it proves. I think it proves you don't have to do everything just this way and that to be successful. I think many hams believe that they must make their antenna exactly so long and put it up exactly so high. They must make their station ground exactly this way and that. And a hundred other things must be done exactly the way it says in this book or that. I've never done anything like that here. I just put up what I can fit in for an antenna and ground, and look what I've done with that. A good analogy comes from another of my hobbies, fishing. Many people will not fish unless the sun and moon are in a certain position or the barometer is rising or falling, and the like. I go fishing when I feel like it, not when some fishing guide tells me the fishing is going to be good. And you know what, most of the time I go, probably at least 2/3 of the trips, I catch something. Most of the no catch trips come early in the season or late in the season, and the percentage from say May through September is even better than that. Maybe I'll see what the actual percentage is sometime and report it here. -30- Thursday, April 17, 2008 - Well, it almost looks like we bypassed spring and went right into summer. It was sunny with temps near 80 degrees today, and you bet I took advantage of it. I was sick of the cold weather of winter and early spring. I started off trimming my pine tree in the back yard. I get tired of trimming it back every year, so this time I'm taking a lot off of it to make the job easier in the next few years. Then I got to looking at my grass and it needed mowing already, so I did that. Next it was down to the river for some fishing, and as I said yesterday my fishing streak probably wouldn't last long. I was shut out today. A friend was fishing with me, and he almost lost his pole to a fish. He was talking to someone who had stopped by that he knew, and some fish, probably a carp, thought he'd like to have a pole of his own. My friend grabbed the pole just before it went into the water, but the line broke, so we didn't get to see the fish, but I'm just about sure it was a carp. I know their habits pretty well by now. Then it was back home for a bite to eat. Next off to help Ange dig up a couple more fig trees at his house. That took a couple hours or so, and he drove me home. I fooled around inside for a while, then went out to go shopping for a few grocery items. However my neighbors were out playing basketball, so I joined in and played for a while, mostly with the young daughter. She wanted to play till one of us made 20 baskets. Well, she wound up beating me 20-19. Then I continued on to the store and did my shopping. When I got home, I played with my new toy, the TS-480SAT. I worked VP9KF on 40, along with WA8QFE and KX9DX. I'm getting more and more used to it now and liking it more. After that it was out for a last walk today. I didn't put in many miles today (only 5.55 as I check my pedometer), but I think I got enough exercise in other ways. It feels great to get so much exercise, and I'm looking forward to a lot more if this nice weather continues. And oh yes, it looks more and more like my tomatoes have started. There is a small bulge developing at the base of the flowers which didn't open at all today, by the way. -30- Wednesday, April 16, 2008 - It looks like I may possibly have a little tomato starting on one of my plants. Actually 2 tomatoes. The flowers didn't open fully today, and that's usually the sign of a successful pollination. So hopefully my Q-tip "bee" did the job. I'll know for sure in a couple days. If so, I think that may put me a couple days ahead of last years schedule. My fishing 'streak' is now at 2 trips. I went again today and got a 13 inch sucker. Not many bites, but at least I haven't been shut out so far this year. That probably won't last long though, as it's usually pretty slow this early in the season. Anyway even if the fish don't bite, it is delightful to be outside in the lovely weather that has finally arrived here. It was around 70 degrees today, and should be the same or even warmer the next couple days or so, and maybe beyond that. -30- Tuesday, April 15, 2008 - One of the simple joys in life is having someone ask you a question you can easily and completely answer. That happened to me today. Geo N1EAV asks, "Just had one quick question that maybe you can answer in the diary. Probably pretty insignificant, but just wondering why you stopped using a time stamp in your entries." Simple - I'm using a different HTML editor which doesn't have an easy quick way to insert a time stamp like the editor I used previously. Oh and thanks for the congrats, Geo. Today was a landmark day for me. I opened my fishing season. I went for a walk this morning and it was so nice out and the river was down to a good fishing level, so I turned around and headed home. I made some peanut butter bread, gathered up my fishing gear and headed back to the river. For the first hour or so I was shut out without even a trace of a nibble. Then a friend of mine stopped by and we chatted for a while. I noticed my pole moved just a tad a couple times. I wasn't sure it was a bite or not. My friend is kind of a beachcomber in that he walks along the river's edge looking for lost fishing tackle, etc. He wandered off a bit up the river, and then I noticed my pole was bouncing a bit more. I picked it up and before long, the telltale bite of a carp thrilled me. I didn't get impatient and waited for him to take the bait, set the hook and had a nice 5 or so minutes battle with my friend watching and reeling in my other line so they wouldn't get tangled. At first, despite the bite, it didn't feel like a carp, but after a while I saw the golden brown color in the water at the end of my line and knew it was definitely a carp. I pulled him (her?) out of the water, removed the hook, measured him and put him back in the water. He turned out to be the most common size carp that I catch - 26 inches. I was going to leave, but decided I'd stick it out a bit longer after catching the carp. About 20 minutes later I had another series of nibbles, but after waiting a while with no further action than that, I quit and headed home. So that made my day. When I got home, it wasn't long before Ange (my garden friend) showed up and wanted to know if I wanted to dig up some of the fig trees. I said sure, so we dug up, let's see, 5 of the smaller ones which leaves 4 bigger ones to go, or actually 5 since we buried two together in the same mound last fall. 3 in the garden near here and 2 more at his house. We'll do them later in the week. And if those are not enough signs that spring is here, all the trees are starting to turn green here in town. My lettuce and onions are growing. My tomatoes are probably getting anxious to be outside. It's just a great time of year. I'm having fun with the 'new' TS-480SAT here. I'm learning the filter setups better and they seem to really knock down my noise a little better than the 570. I worked my first DX with it this evening - FM/I2GPT, and it was split frequency. The split setup on the 480 is quite a bit different than the 570, but I mastered it quickly enough to get the FM station before he drew a big pileup, if he did. -30- Monday, April 14, 2008 - So much to say, and so little time. Why is it always like that? When I have a lot to say, I'm running late and involved in many different things. When there's not much to talk about, I have all the time in the world. Aha, now I understand after writing that, don't you? At any rate, one more thanks for a 5,000 day congratulations goes to Ivin W9ILF who sent a radiogram relayed to me via Mo, WB3ING. I just debuted a new poll a few minutes ago. As you'll see, this was suggested by Richard and amended by Tom. It's kind of a different format poll, and was hard to set up, but I think it will prove to be yet another interesting one, as I hope all my polls are. I think I mentioned this, but my friend Eric KB3BFQ who is largely responsible for the idea for my streak, is getting back into ham radio, and just a little while ago submitted his application to join the NAQCC. And now to another great part of today. My friend Mike KC2EGL visited today with his new K2 rig, and I got to play with it for a while. It seems to be as good a rig as everyone says, although setting all the filters it contains is very complicated at first go, and we never did get it optimized for the noise at my house. However with all the settings, I'm sure once Mike masters them, he'll bring it back for another test and we'll find out that it will make a big difference in reception here. Mike insisted I make the first QSO with the rig, so I did, and we worked W6KBJ in Bedford, NH on 40M. Mike is making the K2 his main station rig now, and is loaning me his TS-480SAT indefinitely. So I have a 'new' toy to play with. I also made a couple QSO's with it, so I wound up with 4 QSO's using 3 different rigs on the 14th. There's probably a lot more I could say about events of the past few days here, but I just have no more time as I've got a lot of other things to get caught up on before bed time tonight. -30- Sunday, April 13, 2008 - Some more streak congrats, etc., but first I just want to pass along this touching story involving two of my favorite people and ham radio. It's from the ARRL Letter, Vol. 27, No. 14, April 11, 2008 to give proper credit as is always due when quoting something. "* William F. Buckley Meets Amateur Radio: In a personal essay published in the April 7, 2008 issue of "The National Review," the late William F. Buckley Jr described a fascinating story involving himself, Senator Barry Goldwater, K7UGA (SK), and of course ham radio. It seems that Mr Buckley was part of a 12 man trip to Russia's Vostok station, a very remote outpost at the magnetic South Pole. In addition to his brother, Senator James Buckley, their old pal Barry Goldwater and his son Barry Jr were also members of this expedition. Buckley described being in a crowded Soviet igloo, entertained with "trays of caviar and tumblers of vodka." After toasting his Russian host, he was suddenly taken aside by Barry Jr. "Dad wants to see you" he said, pointing to the door. Buckley was taken to another igloo, apparently the radio shack. "Thought you might like to talk to your wife," the senior Goldwater said. Buckley describes the prideful look on Goldwater's face, having maneuvered the Soviet radio to contact his wife back home in Arizona! Although he was a man famous for his complete control of the English language, Bill Buckley said he was "speechless" as he heard the telephone ringing and his wife answering the telephone! He said, "It's me darling" and his wife responded, "It's three o'clock in the morning!" Buckley exclaimed, "I'm calling from the South Pole!" This story reminded me of the many nights back in the late 1970s when I gladly helped with phone patches from the US Navy base at McMurdo, Antarctica. Just as Senator Goldwater did, I awakened many people in the wee hours of the morning with a phone call from their loved ones on the bottom of the world! -- Bruce Jackson, KA5ELC, Cordova, Tennessee" Of course the two people I refer to are Bill Buckley and Barry Goldwater. It's too bad they are no longer with us. I've updated the QRP Streak page in the QRP section of the web site to bring it up to 5,000 days if you want to take a look. A lot of the descriptive material is still the same, but some is new and of course all the stats and significant milestones are updated. I mentioned about working Paul N0NBD on 30M. Here's the story from his end of the QSO as emailed to me a little while ago. "Hello John and thanks for the quick chat today. I worked all day on a project and looked at the clock and ran upstairs to the shack.[me running is quite a sight hi hi] Low and behold there was K3WWP calling CQ. Ur RST was 229 and I am Proud to have made ur log again. I am sending another card. My wife has not made me any new cards yet so I PROUDLY wrote my NAQCC number 238 on the top. I have about 30 cards to write on and then she will make more. Winter is supposed to come back tonight and tomorrow night. Glad I have not set out any tomatoes yet. The wx says temps in the 30s. Hope the cold wx does not come up ur way. Have a good one and CU agn de Paul N0NBD." It is going to get cold here, but my tomatoes are nice and cozy right next to me here, and hey they have blossoms on them as of about 4 days ago. Time for me to get busy as a bee (my friend Ed gets credit for that line) and start pollinating with my Q-tip. Even though I planted them a week early this year, the blossoms only showed up a couple days early from looking at pictures from last year. And getting back on track, I also want to thank Mike KC2EGL and Dick J49XF/G3URA for their congrats on the streak. -30- Saturday, April 12, 2008 - LAST UPDATE - I just want to thank a couple more folks for their congratulations either tonite or a few days ago before 5,000 was actually reached. Ron K5DUZ, and Bob VA3RKM. UPDATE 2 - Nothing much in the 2200-2300Z hour. I forgot about the GA QSO Party - that wiped me out for 40M. I was delighted to work Paul N0NBD on 30M though. He has been a long time follower of this web site and the streak, and is a good ham/email friend. The streak is now at 5,001 days as I just worked N4NX in the GA QP shortly after 0000Z. Onward and upward! UPDATE - The 1500-1600Z hour was pretty much a bust. I tuned all the CW portions of 20 and 30 and didn't hear a single station, and no one answered my CQ's on those bands. I did make 2 QSO's on 40M, but neither were aware of the streak or didn't say anything about it. I MAY try the 2200-2300Z hour later today on 7041+/- and/or 10111+/-, but I'm not sure yet. I'll probably update this later in the day as I did for yesterday. Right now though I just want to publicly thank all those who have congratulated me on the streak in case I missed thanking them personally. Thanks to: Paul N8XMS, Bob W3BBO, Brian KB9BVN, Paul N4UEB, Paul N0NBD, Ivin W9ILF, Larry W2LJ (see http://w2lj.blogspot.com/), WB2GTG. -30- Friday, April 11, 2008 UPDATE - Here it is after 0100Z and the streak is at 5,000 days. QSO's were made in the 0000-0100Z hour with the following: WA8REI, W2JEK, W9ILF on 80M, WB4YZA, KB9BIT on 40M. Conditions were absolutely horrible with thunderstorms in the area giving S9+20 QRN on the bands. If I missed anyone's call, I apologize. I thought I heard a W1 calling at one time, but never copied more than that. Right now as I type and look at the radar, there is an ominous looking TS that looks like it will (hopefully) just pass us to the southeast. That was probably the one causing a lot of the QRN. I got a picture of myself calling CQ just before WA8REI answered me, and taped the whole hour on cassette. When I'll get a chance to do anything with them, I don't know. I felt it was appropriate that Ken WA8REI was my first QSO since we have been friends for almost 42 years now. Let's see what happens in the 1500-1600Z hour later today. Oh, as a bonus, I got my final letter (T) to complete the NAQCC April Challenge. Finally, looking ahead, day #10,000 would be December 20, 2021. Hmmmm..... Nah, I don't think so. I'll be 76 years old if I make it that far. -30- Friday, April 11, 2008 - It looks like April is the month for milestones. I've been so busy of late, I forgot to mention that April 3 was the 45th anniversary of receiving my Novice ticket as KN3WWP. I remembered it while in the shack and was going to mention it here, but got distracted by a million other things (a conservative estimate). Well, as I'm typing this I hear the rumble of thunder. I believe that is only the first or second time this year so far I've heard that. I reached another milestone last night when I hit the 1,000 point mark in our NAQCC Worked Members Award. And of course later tonight if all goes well, it will be day 5,000 in the streak. Thanks to Brian KB9BVN for the radiogram of congratulations on the streak delivered by phone by WB2GTG about an hour ago. I've got my cassette recorder set up to record some QSO's tonight, and will try to take a picture with my digital camera. I haven't been all that excited about the 5,000th day, but as the time approaches I'm getting a bit more excited about it. I just hope we don't get a severe storm that knocks out our power about that time. -30- Thursday, April 10, 2008 - Well, I've decided not to make all that big a thing out of the 5,000th day. I've never been a fan of special days anyway. I always figure a birthday doesn't mean I'm a year older. I could actually feel 5 years older than my last birthday or even feel younger than my last birthday. It's really just another day. The same with New Year's day. There is really nothing special about that split second when we transfer from one year to the next. There are a million other split seconds that are identical to it as far as time keeping goes. It's all based on numbers, and I do have an interest in such things because of my life-long fascination with numbers and math, but not really because they have any special meaning otherwise. What, when you get right down to it, is any more special about day 5,000 in my streak than say day 4,623 or day 5,104. It's really just a number. And hey if we counted in another number system, say oh... binary or hexadecimal, April 12th might not be any particular round number at all. According to my Excalibur calculator if I'm reading it right, 5,000 decimal is 1 0011 1000 1000 binary, 11610 octal, and 1388 hexadecimal. See, nothing special. However a few of you do seem to see it as a special day, and it is even being written up in a couple of ham publications, so.... For those of you who for whatever reason do want to work me that day, I'll try to adhere to the following schedule: 0000-0100Z 7041+/- or 3559+/- depending on condx 1500-1600Z 7041+/- or 10111+/- or 14059+/- If you do answer my CQ, I hope you'll forgive me if I don't remember your name as my memory is slipping as I get older and get to know more and more of you all the time. It's kind of like going into a store that has hundreds or thousands of patrons. All the patrons may know the name of the check-out girl, but she certainly won't know all the patron's names. Perhaps you might indicate you are calling me for the streak in some way, so I can just make it a short QSO, JUST IN CASE there might be several folks waiting to work me, which I kind of doubt, but you never can tell for sure. Let's see, how about sending /S after your call. If I change anything or add more times, I'll post the info here tomorrow. The logs are continuing to pour in for our Tuesday evening NAQCC sprint. We're approaching another record number of logs, so if you participated and haven't sent in your log yet, I hope you'll do so. -30- Wednesday, April 9, 2008 - Just a little mish-mash of things today. First I'm not going to make a big deal out of day #5,000 this Saturday since only a few of you voted in my little informal poll about it. I'll probably just announce a couple hours of op time, take a picture and perhaps record the audio from the first QSO that day. I'll post any definite info on my plans in an entry tomorrow evening. No sore muscles today from the basketball last night, and it didn't affect my straight key sending in the sprint either. The sprint went quite well, both for me personally and as a whole. There was tons of activity, and as Paul KD2MX said in his soapbox entry, "...I think our sprint has become the premier QRP event." Perhaps so, perhaps so. 40 meters was very up and down for me here, but 80 was just fabulous with one string of 25 QSO's in 48 minutes. That kind of steady rate doesn't happen often in our sprints. However it may become more commonplace as the popularity of the sprints continues to grow. I worked a few newcomers last night and in a casual glance at the logs as they come in, I see a lot of unfamiliar calls there as well. If you participated, please send in your log. Not sending a log is like painting a beautiful painting and then putting it in a closet so no one can see it. You should share your results with the world, no matter how many or how few contacts you made. Remember that tells the world that CW is still loved and used by many hams when they see your call listed in the results. -30- Tuesday, April 8, 2008 - One should probably not play basketball with the neighbor kids just before a NAQCC sprint, but then I really don't know any better. The next door neighbor was putting up a basketball hoop when I was coming home from a walk, so I helped a bit including loaning him a taller ladder after seeing him tottering on the top step of his short ladder. While he was finishing up with help from his wife, I played ball with his 8 year old daughter and a neighbor girl about 13 years old. Then when the hoop was finally finished and ready to go, we all played basketball for a while. We were just kind of shooting in a rough sort of game of HORSE, for lack of a better description although there wasn't any real organization to it. That was the first time I've shot a basketball in a good many years and it felt good to get the ball in my hands and propel it in the general direction of the basket. And hey, a few of my shots even went in, including some 'nothing but net' shots from probably 15-20 feet out or so. But my percentage was probably under 20%, and included a number of 'air balls' as well. Still it was a lot of fun, and some good exercise for some muscles that haven't been used for a while. I may know which ones tomorrow. HI. Hopefully they aren't the same ones I use for pounding a straight key which I'll be doing in about 15 mins now. I better hurry now, but I did want to say, "How about that NCAA basketball championship game last night?" That was really great. When I watch two teams play that I like about equally well, for one reason or other I get to rooting for one of them against the other. Last night I developed into rooting for Kansas, and thought they were down the tubes with 2 1/2 minutes to go and 9 points down, but wasn't that a magnificent comeback after that? Wow. I'll remember that game for a while. I think that's the first overtime game in a final since sometime in the mid-90's. I have it on my spreadsheet, but just don't remember exactly now. Well, off to get my temperature readings for the day. The high was in the 70's, perhaps the warmest day yet this year. Then to the NAQCC sprint, so 73 for now. -30- Monday, April 7, 2008 - After the abundance of things to write about the past few days, this was kind of an off day with not much happening to speak of. Of course the NCAA playoff final game is later tonight. I'll probably watch some of that. Actually I find the opening rounds of the tournament the most exciting and my interest kind of dwindles proportionally to the number of teams left. It's nice to see the bands so good the past few days. I hope the trend continues for our NAQCC sprint tomorrow evening. I'd love to see us break our record set last month for number of entries, participants, and QSO's again this month. It would be wonderful to see us top the 70 log mark this month. That would make the NAQCC's pro-CW statement stronger and stronger. Incidentally, I wasn't satisfied with the 8.5 mile walk I described yesterday, and wound up with over 14 miles for the day after adding a couple more walks later in the day. Today I had some other things to tend to, and only have 5.45 miles on the pedometer at the moment. I'll probably go out for one more walk later though to at least get up to my long-term average of 7.3 miles per day. Wow, I just looked and it's been almost 4 years (started 4/20/04) that I've been keeping track of my daily walks with a pedometer. That's a total of 10,582 miles from 20,187,000 steps. Whew! My best day was 18.73 miles, and the worst just 0.89 days I see from my spreadsheet. Only one hour to go now till April 8 UTC and a chance to cut the number of days remaining to 5,000 down to just 4. And with the sprint tomorrow evening, that day should be a cinch. Incidentally (to start yet another paragraph with that word), from time to time over the streak, people have referred to 5,000 QSO's, or 4,500 QSO's, etc. Folks, it's not 5,000 QSO's, but 5,000 CONSECUTIVE DAYS beginning August 5, 1994 of making AT LEAST one QRP/CW/simple wire antenna QSO. There is a big difference. My 5,000th QRP/CW/simple wire antenna QSO in the streak came on September 4, 1995, a mere 13 months into the streak. Now I have 47,501 QRP/CW/simple wire antenna QSO's in the streak as of today. -30- Sunday, April 6, 2008 - Boy that feels good. I just got back from an 8.5 mile walk including a walk up to a beautiful scenic spot I haven't been to since I was a youngster. It's called Buttermilk Falls. I got a few pictures along the way but didn't get a picture of the main part of the falls as there was a bunch of people in front of them, and I didn't want to disturb them. Also my camera batteries decided to run low so I didn't take as many pictures as I wanted. I hope to post some of them on SkyDrive as soon as I get time. Right now I'm off to the kitchen to fix some supper. Oh, before I go, how about the NCAA playoffs? Although I never predict anything, I had thought that UCLA and Carolina would be in the final Monday night. However Memphis and Kansas had other ideas. Still as I said, I like all 4 teams and I will still be happy with either Memphis or Kansas as champs. Some more comments on the streak from Paul N0NBD: "After re-thinking the whole Streak thing I do think some publicity should be done. I have been coming here for quite a while reading and hoping for the best for your streak. I think Don's (VA3BOW) quote is a good one!.... Either way, GOOD LUCK, BREAK A LEG and all the good wishes. de Paul N0NBD." Thanks Paul. Ivin W9ILF says, "I have been reading your diary and watching with a lot of interest in your upcoming 5000 days of continuous QSO's. I do hope you decide to celebrate your achievement with something special. It is a celebration of not only the QSO's, but your long term commitment to Radio, QRP, and CW! I appreciate your dedication!" As they say in TV election returns, with just a few precincts reporting - doing something special on the 12th is taking an early lead. And Ivin included this very telling true statement also, "I have been experimenting with PSK31 some. I got an inexpensive Rigblaster Nomic. Boy PSK31 seems a lot harder than CW. I've only made one QSO in three days that way. It really is true that a CW contact is the easiest most reliable way to get through." So very very true. There is nothing like good old tried and true CW for making meaningful QSO's in ham radio. Baltasar EA8BVP came up with a very good idea I'll try to implement: "Somebody can record your audio QSOs. You can send a message like "U HV MADE MY 5000 DAY". You can put those .mp3 or .wma on your website to share with us. It's just another way to celebrate that important day." I'll have to work on that. I have transferred a lot of old cassette tape stuff to .wma files, so I could record on a cassette and then do that. -30- Saturday, April 5, 2008 - Thanks for the votes and comments on 'Streak Day'. You see, it's you who seem to be making a big thing of this day, and that's why I decided to let you help me decide about what to do. I feel that really making a big thing out of it is in a way glorifying myself, and I don't want to do that. However, making a big thing out of it also serves to tell the ham radio world that this thing called CW is still a big, viable, effective, and VERY efficient mode of operation and should continue to be a large part of the hobby, and I always love doing anything that demonstrates that. So in that case I'm all for publicizing it to the hilt, and leaning more toward doing so. Let me share one comment that was made in the votes so far. ".... Announce a sked of your op times and freqs for that day in your diary. A lot of people like you John and would like to share this day with you in a personal and yet long distance way via our favourite mode - CW. '73 Don VA3BOW" Yes, I do feel I've made an awful lot of friends through the streak, and working a lot of them on 'Streak Day' would be a way of showing my appreciation. And a lot of QSO's that day would help to make a strong pro-CW statement as well. Keep the votes and thoughts coming, and we'll make a decision together over the next few days. In a related matter, Larry W2LJ says, "When you mentioned in your diary that day 5,000 of your streak would occur on April 12th, that caught my eye. I've always been a huge follower of the manned space programs - both ours and Russia's. You probably already know this but April 12th marks the anniversary of three important space events: April 12th, 1960 - Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man to orbit the earth. April 12th, 1970 - This was one day before the famous words were uttered - "Houston, we have a problem!" The next day the explosion aboard the Service Module of Apollo 13 occurred. April 12th, 1981 - The Space Shuttle Columbia lifts off to begin the STS era of manned spaceflight for NASA and the United States." Interesting. I'm also a huge fan of the space program, but I didn't realize until Larry mentioned it, the significance of that date. Finally a note on the bands. The past couple evenings have been good for DX. I worked VP5/W5CW on 30/40, PJ5NA on 30, and TF4M on 40. I'm proud of the TF4M QSO since I beat a sizable pileup to make that QSO. -30- Friday, April 4, 2008 - Although nothing is sure or guaranteed in life, I probably (hopefully) will reach day # 5,000 in the streak on Saturday, April 12. I've decided to let you help me decide what I should do on that day to celebrate if it does happen. Email me and select any of the following. I'll analyze the votes and decide from there. Make the subject of your email "K3WWP Streak" - any other subject and your email will be returned and you'll have to try again. The VERY FIRST THING in the body of the email will be a list of the letters representing your choice(s) - any email without a letter or series of letters at the start will be returned also. After the letters of your choices, you can then add any comments if you have any to make. You can only vote once. Now the choices: A - announce a sked of my op times and freqs for that day here in the diary. B - make up a special QSL for all QSO's that day. C - a special certificate to the first QSO of the day. D - any other suggestions (list below in your email). E - don't do anything special - treat it as any other day I will somehow get a picture taken during the first QSO that day, so you don't need to vote on that. My digital camera has a nice delay shutter opening so I can do that by myself if no one else is around. -30- Thursday, April 3, 2008 - Usually when I do these entries early in the day as I'm doing now, I think of some 'great' things later in the day I should have included. HI. That happened yesterday so I'm trying to remember what I thought of then, and include them now. Then the cycle will probably continue tomorrow. I had an interesting question from Bryan N4UXA in an email that said in part, "Could you tell me where you obtained your weather station shelter? I'm speaking of the slatted wood box shown in the pictures on your diary lately. I had one of these boxes long ago, but the weather finally took it's toll on it some years ago. I'd like to get another, but I can't remember where I saw them for sale. Thanks for any info you can provide. I'm glad you are feeling better, and good luck on your streak!" Thank you Bryan for the comments at the end. Also for the compliment on the thermometer shelter. It's not a commercial unit but a totally homebrew unit. I made the first one back in the 60's, and it too deteriorated over time and was repaired/rebuilt a few times during the 40 plus years since then. The one pictured now was built back in December 2006 with the help of my friend in town, Bill Hake. We used scrap wood from his collection and my collection, and built it in his workshop and mine. The only tricky part to building one is cutting the slots for the louvers in the corner posts. In the ones I built by myself, I just used a hand saw, some careful measurements and a lot of patience. I didn't even use a miter box for the very early versions. Bill has a table saw so rigging up a little jig (a la Norm on the New Yankee Workshop) and the table saw made the job a little easier this time when we rebuilt the whole thing from scratch. In case you're also wondering if I have any plans for it, no I don't except in my head. I love woodworking and it would probably be a main-line hobby here if I had more time and money to buy tools like Norm has. My collection of woodworking tools more closely resembles Roy Underhill's on the Woodwright's Shop. HI. So it's nice to have friends like Bill who do have a better collection of tools. Coincidentally we are going to work on my sundial today. We built it last Spring, and it kind of suffered the ravages of the weather since then. As I said here a few days ago, I now have buds on the tomato plants, and yesterday I took a picture to show you here. And yes, the picture will really be here, not another (late) April Fool's joke. HI.  That's one of the Siberians. The other Siberian also has buds just a tiny bit smaller. The 'World's Largest Tomato' doesn't seem to have any yet, although I might be seeing some just starting. It's too early to tell for sure. The number of visitors to my site has been well above normal the past couple days - around 200 each day vs. a norm of about 150 or so. That usually means info on my site has been posted somewhere, but as I've said repeatedly, I do not subscribe to any email reflectors nor have time to browse other ham radio sites, so I'm just guessing about that. At any rate if any of you are new to the site and/or diary, I'm glad you decided to visit - welcome, be sure to come back regularly. And I'm glad to see all the regulars continue to visit as well. I'm still thinking about something special to do for day # 5,000 on April 12th. I've had some suggestions like being sure to take a picture as I make the first QSO on that day. Or announce a sked of my operating times and freqs for that day so those who've followed the streak for so long can try to work me then. Or perhaps some kind of special thank you certificate to the first one I work. Maybe even some special QSL card to all I work that day. Well my thought is that all that sounds like I'm glorifying myself and I don't think that is proper. The purpose of the streak besides being a lot of personal fun for me, is simply to demonstrate how effective and efficient CW is as an operating mode. My reward has been the number of hams who have re-discovered CW as a result of reading about my success with the streak. Thus doing my small part in preserving this great ham radio mode. -30- Wednesday, April 2, 2008 - Portions of this entry contained apparently incorrect information and have been removed or corrected. Early in the NAQCC's existence, we started the idea of having a mid-week evening sprint. Other sprints had been done on the weekends or days adjacent to a weekend (Spartan Sprint on Monday), but we believe our idea of something in the middle of a week was an original one. Shortly after that (Dec 2004) Gary K8KFJ suggested we link our sprints to the use of a straight key. We thought that was a great idea and implemented it immediately. As far as our alternating weeknights for the sprints. I think that innovation is still unique to our club as far as I know. Another idea originated by the NAQCC, as far as we know, are our alphabet challenges which are for making words, calls, sentences, etc. from letters of stations worked. Our first one was conceived in November 2004 by club president and founder Tom WY3H when he came up with the Thanksgiving Turkey challenge of making Thanksgiving-related words. We are proud that the NAQCC does its best to come up with original ideas for its events. If we have something that is similar to what another club is doing, we acknowledge that as in the time we had a sprint with a special award to the one who had the highest total of member numbers worked. We made sure to acknowledge that the idea was taken from the FISTS Millionaire award. One example from one of our awards is the opening line of our Alphabet Prefix award rules which says, "This is a simpler version of the popular CQ Magazine WPX Award." All statements in this entry are true and accurate to the best of my knowledge. -30- Tuesday, April 1, 2008 - !yaD s'looF lirpA yppaH Didja enjoy my dry humor joke in yesterday's entry? Or even realize it was a joke? Dry humor is very subtle humor. I mean the invisible picture. I hope some of you either right clicked on the area and clicked show picture or wondered if it had something to do with the IE8/IE7 info I've been talking about lately, or thought I accidentally left it out (one person did think that - GOTCHA - HI). I don't believe in the obvious like these standard jokes. Calling the zoo and asking to speak to Mr. Bear, or calling someone and asking if their (fill in appliance here) is running, and if they say yes, telling them to go catch it. I thought one of the better original ones of late was the fellow who bought his wife a lottery ticket, then rigged a fake lottery drawing somehow that looked exactly like the real thing (must have had help from the local TV station). At the normal drawing time, he called his wife from the kitchen to come watch, and instead of the real drawing, played the tape showing the numbers on her ticket as the winning numbers for 50 million dollars (or whatever the figure was). After they celebrated for a while, he told her it was an April Fool's joke. I wonder if the poor fellow is out of intensive care yet. HI HI Then of course the classic joke articles in CQ magazine back in the 60's/70's(?). I got rid of some of my old CQ magazines and couldn't find that 'Ionospheric Amplification' article when Karl N3IJR visited last week. We did find one of the AF articles though so I could show Karl how elaborate they were. Now you be very, very careful lest someone does something to you today, and then YELLS  And finally, yes, Tom did take my picture at the weather station. I've now made it visible here:  -30- |