Monday, January 9, 2012

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.

7 comments:

Jspiker said...

That should make the back feel much better!
Great contact !!

Jspiker said...

That should make the back feel much better!
Great contact !!

VE9KK said...

Good evening John, yes I was very surprised by the contact but that is how ham radio goes.

Larry W2LJ said...

Mike,

Hope you're feeling better soon. When I throw my back out, I rely heavily on the ThermaCare patches. They really work for me.

Larry W2LJ

VE9KK said...

Good evening Larry, thanks for the support and I use this stuff called Bio-frezze. Seems to do the trick and as long as I don't bend or twist the wrong way things don't seem to get to bad. I will go online and look up thermaCare patches.

Anonymous said...

Hi Mike, Reunion Island...nice one for the log :0)

I put my back out about four years ago.
Luckily I've had no back pain since,.....
But I remember it well :0(

Ham Radio.best cure there is for back pain HI

Hope you are up and around soon...
73 Mark MW0MJB

VE9KK said...

Good evening Mark, Yes ham radio sure can help with the pain....having said that I have been trying to get PSK up and running here. It would seem the back has less pain than getting this mode up and going!!