Too busy to play much again this weekend. Probably mobile UHF is about as much radio play as I'll get. Hopefully things will slow down in a couple weeks and I'll have some play time.

I'm missing the Jan. VHF sweepstakes which I participated in last year as KJ4BEE, that's a huge bummer, but oh well.

I had an Idea for the NC QsO party, I have a friend who is a pilot, I thought about contracting him to fly me around over NC so that I could participate in the NC QSO party as Air Mobile Rover. Is there a class for that? Or do I just go in as rover? Got any idea? give me a reply. That's like a year out probably, this year I wanted to go out to Ocracoke Island for the NCQP, but that's probably not going to happen either. I am still holding on to the possibility of running a multi op effort with some friends.

Well, it's almost been a week. I did have some fun with the radio this week. Made a few contacts on 40m that were interesting. XE1YQQ, Theodoro in Mexico City, Mexico also IZ8DEP Alfred on the west coast of Italy who gave me a 5.9 report, interestingly enough Alfred also has a US callsign which is KI4RMF, not many folks have calls in more than one country, so that is pretty cool. Also HR2DMR Dan in Honduras who also gave me a 59 signal report, Dan was my first contact into Honduras so I thought that was pretty cool. That's about it for DX this week, I probably wont have much chance to work the VFO this weekend, although I might head down to the shack tonight and jump in on 40m.

I also had a nice Ragchew QSO with Harry, KW5HP, who lives in Little Rock Arkansas. We had a good conversation about antennas, photography, and even a mention of two of amplifiers, although neither of us was running any extra power, both just 100w "barefoot". Harry was running an inverted V dipole that is hidden in the easement behind his house, he called it his StealthTenna. That's a good idea for people who live in restricted areas, a lot of the time you can put up a dipole or some other wire antenna and no one will even know it is there. It certainly didn't hurt Harry's signal any he had great audio and a beautiful 5 by 9 signal report on 7.205Mhz. Thanks for the QSO Harry!

Earlier in the week we did a bit of a propagation test on 10m, 28.425Mhz. My brother, Spencer, KJ4GPP installed in his attic a "Tech Dipole" which is just a short dipole cut to be centered on 28.4 Mhz. He is up at school in Farmville, VA and we didn't have any luck the other night on 10m. He couldn't even hear a friend of mine here locally who was running power and a log periodic beam pointed at him. I'm pretty sure it's just because the band was not open. So, were hoping for more solar activity. Or maybe we can just get Spencer to upgrade, that's the answer there.

Ciao!

73

AJ4TW

Well, today I've added a video bar of my Youtube channel in. If I've worked you and recorded the contact chances are that it will show up on my Youtube channel, Shiftlink. One way to find my recording of one of our contacts would be to search your callsign on Youtube.

I really wanted to play on 20m today, but the sun is now going down and it has become very apparent that real life has gotten in the way of play today. Maybe after dinner I'll go to the shack and get in on 40m. There are also a couple of nets tonight on VHF and UHF, one is the local VHF Sunday evening net on 146.670 the K4EG repeater. The other is the Southeast Dstar Weather net which we usually hear on the 145.320 Dstar repeater in Burlington, which is actually located just down the road from my house on Cane Mountain.

Anyway, maybe I'll find some time to play today, I sure hope so!
73
AJ4TW

Well, here is my brand new Blog. I've got some place to put up my Ustream.tv now! Maybe I'll figure out how to put an interactive log-book up too. I have some other ideas as well. AB3KC, my brother, Collins, gave me an Arduino and an ethernet shell for Christmas. I have a few thought about what kinds of things I could send to this blog from that Arduino unit, so look for that in the future. It's going to take some time for me to put the hardware together. Also the only thing I've ever written a program for is a graphing calculator, so I'll take up some time learning that as well.

My last blog faded into disuse withing two posts, and in fact I just deleted it. But I think I can make this one hang around a bit longer.

I hope you enjoy it, and I hope I do too!
73
AJ4TW