Sunday, August 17, 2008

Hey, thank you Alaska!

Ah, the sweet victory of another state checked off my WAS totals! Thanks to Phil, KL8DX in Alaska for the confirmed QSL that my radio signals landed in the great state to the northwest.

It all started when I joined the SKCC club. This club was arranged for straight key enthusiasts to practice and use their straight keys on the air. Well, the SKCC club has a SKED page (http://www.obriensweb.com/sked/index.html) of which I linked up with Phil. For fun, I called Phil using QRP power and was pleased to find out he could copy me! Since that QSO, we have had several other QSO's and it goes to proove that amateur radio links people together all around the world/country.

As of today, I need QSL confirmations from the following states for my multi-mode WAS: DE, GA, MD, MN, MO, MS, NH, RI, VT, and WY. Of those, I have had QSO's with hams in MD, MO, MS, NH, and WY but have not received QSL confirmation. I believe I am over the major difficulty stage on WAS by nailing down ND, SD, AK, HI so now it's more a matter of trying to get more active to wrap this award up.

I have been doing a little CW here and there. Not as much as I would hope. School has been very exhaustive lately! I worked quite a few guys when they were running QRP power but lately it seems like the band are not doing well and I have a hard time getting responces from my CQ's at 100 watts. Part of the problem is my homework pushes my operating pretty late into the evening so I'm sure many hams are asleep when I am calling CQ.

I worked a QRP station in Canada, VE7SL Steve.. He was running a very neat homebrew copy of a WWII radio called a Paraset. Here is a description of his radio (http://imagenisp.com/jsm/PARASET.html) It was a very neat QSO and it will be a memorable QSO for a long time!

Take care all, Joe N0NS

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