Resting and radio........

CT1IUA on the beach

Good afternoon fellow bloggers, went to see the Chiropractor and Physiotherapist today regarding my back troubles. The news was...... come back and see us and in the mean time REST!!! Well for me it is very hard to sit still and Julie can attest to that. One way to make sure I sit still and rest is to softly hobble into the radio room. I started out the day on WSPR I was transmitting 1 watt on 20 meters. The big reception report for me was from FR5DN on Reunion Island. At 1 watt that made it 9463 miles per watt for my attic dipole. I also tried some CW on 30m and 17m. Now my DX-33 dipole is not resonant for either of these bands but the K3 does

PV8ADI at the desk

have a tuner so I gave it a shot. Things did not work out very well although the bands seem to be open my signal was just not happening. The LP-100A meter here was showing an SWR up to the antenna of 8.89:1 on 30m's and 9.3:1 on 17m's. The K3's tuner was able to bring it down to 1:1 so the K3 was happy. Later in the day it was off to CW and I checked DX summit's cluster and found a spot for CT1IUA in Portugal. I spun the K3 over to the spot and there was a nice pileup trying to make contact. I gave it a go and was able to snag CT1IUA on my first call with 5 watts. I then saw a spot for PV8ADI in Brazil I spun the dial in that direction and there was not really anyone calling him. He in fact called CQ several times without an answer. I gave him a go at 1 watt but that did not seem to do the trick. I then went to 2 watts and he was able to make out my call with 2 repeats. Funny though I still got a 599 as a report. So at 2 watts that makes it 1529 miles per watt on that contact. I did notice there was lots of action on PSK on the cluster so this evening I hope to get PSK all straightened out this evening with my rig and the software. That way on Tuesday I can maybe do some digi contacts.