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