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Can't wait 'til New Year's Eve's Straight Key Night? Enjoy CW as it has been sent since the earliest days of Amateur Radio in the SKCC Weekend Sprintathon! The SKCC regularly celebrates the joy of CW ... sent by either hand key or by bug:

The SKCC WES aims to bring together operators with different skill levels in a regularly scheduled, informal operating event lasting 36 hours. The event starts at 1200 UTC on the Saturday following the 6th of each month and ends at 2359 UTC on Sunday. Participants can operate for a total of no more than 24 hours. This event runs from 1200 UTC Aug. 8 to 23:59 UTC Aug. 9.


Non-members are encouraged to join in on the fun and, better yet, get an SKCC number by signing-up. Most of the action will congregate around the SKCC watering-hole frequencies:

Participants may sprint on 160-6 meters, excluding the WARC bands (60, 30, 17, and 12 meters). Suggested frequencies are on or around the SKCC calling frequencies: 1.820, 3.550, 7.055 and 7.114, 14.050, 21.050 and 21.114, 28.050 and 28.114, and 50.090 Mhz. K3UK's sked page or other spotting tools are permitted for this event.

I'll be on 20m for a few hours with my single 6L6 Tri-tet crystal oscillator running about 10 watts ... hopefully within a few KHz of 14.050, doubling from a 40m crystal along with my faithful Vibroplex, purchased as a teenager back in the early 60's.

For all of the details, visit the SKCC WES Rules page here ... so put away your keyers and have some real old fashioned radio fun.

courtesy: http://k1el.tripod.com/

It's been a few years since I've done any CW contesting, mainly because the laptop I have always used became slow and sluggish as well as developing a keying glitch when keying was done via the serial port connection. Apparently it is, or was, a fairly common problem with some operating systems when serial port keying was employed.

Last year I purchased and built the WinKeyer USB keyer, mainly to use as a USB keying interface, and hopefully kill the keying stutter. The stutter would manifest itself in the form of delayed element spacing. For example, the 'C' in a 'CQ' would sound like 'NN'- every once in awhile ... not every time, but often enough to drive me crazy. From lots of 'Googling', I learned that USB keying should solve the problem.

The first thing I did was to download and run 'CCleaner' to scrub the computer of unused files and clean up the registry. My contesting laptop uses Windows XP, which I've always liked but my old system was taking about eight minutes to boot-up from a cold start! Following the CCleaner run, I did a hard drive defragmentation, shut the system down, and pressed the 'on' button. This time the system booted completely in less than two minutes, the fastest in several years!

After, interfacing everything with a half-dozen clip leads (I didn't have the required cables), configuring the WinKeyer and setting up the N1MM logging software for this weekend's NA CW QSO Party, I cautiously waded into the fray.

Yikes!

Like riding a bicycle, it all came back to me quickly. The NA guys are hardcore CW fans and send fast, typically 30WPM or better. I started in the 'Search & Pounce' (S&P) mode to ease into the logging software's required keystrokes but soon felt comfortable enough to change to the 'Run' mode.

Handling the pileups and typing fast enough to keep up was challenging yet exhilarating ... it had been a few years since my last test, the 160m Stew Perry Contest, my favorite. I could only take the heat for so long and after about two hours of steady operating decided to call it a day. It was nice to shake out the new interface and also test my own skills once again. I completed my short test with 137 QSO's and 5891 points ... not much by 'NA' standards but still, for me, a ton of fun and a good 'back-in-the-saddle' re-start.

Now that the software is working well (there were zero keying glitches during the test), I'm looking forward to getting back into some CW contesting again and to improve my ear-brain-computer skills.

Time to get busy and build some interfacing cables and get rid of the clip-lead rat's nest for the next exercise.

Contesting events can be found at WA7BNM's excellent WA7BNM Contest Calender website

Apologies for my bluntness, but it is what it is.

After completing a bunch of yard work, I got set up for the QRP-ARCI Summer Homebrew Sprint. All I heard was a bunch of nothing.  I ended up working K4BAI and N4BP and that was it. Discouraged, and thinking that it might be my portable antennas (which performed just fine for Field Day last weekend), I left the park early and came home. The HF9V and the W3EDP antennas connected to the shack KX3 weren't hearing any more or any better, so I guess it was just a bad propagation day.

So this morning, I noticed a post from another Ham in the Facebook Field Radio group. He didn't have any luck either in his own personal portable ops trip yesterday. He was wondering whether it might be his antennas or a case of an unacceptable SWR ........

So of course, someone had to pipe up with "Try a 100 Watt radio next time. Life is too short for QRP."

That just burns my biscuits. So I fired back with, "Propagation sucked yesterday, and can we do without the "Life's too short for QRP" line? Not only is it untrue, but it's really overused."

A bit later, I got a pang of conscience, feeling that I might have been a bit harsh with that line, so I added, "I've got nothing against QRO (use it myself sometimes). I have been at this Ham Radio thing since 1978 and have been 99 and 44/100ths % QRP since 2003. I'm not trying to make it a "religion" or force anyone into it, but I still get amazed and shake my head sometimes as what 5 Watts will accomplish. But still ...... whatever peels your potato. If you like QRO, fine - QRP, fine - CW, fine - SSB, fine - digital, fine - there's room for all of us. The more the merrier."

Really, there's no reason to ever demean or diminish what someone likes about Amateur Radio. Even if for the life of you, you can't understand why someone would like to spend hours chasing after some little island in the middle of nowhere, or why someone chases signals that you can't even hear with your own ears, or why someone just won't give up on an old, antiquated form of transmission that was invented over 100 years ago and has been dumped by just about everyone else in the world, or why some people seem to get together for hours just to kibbitz about old times or enumerate their aches and pains, or even why someone would "waste" their entire weekend working a contest while simultaneously "clogging up the bands".

If it's what you like, then that's all that's important - and don't let anyone tell you different.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!

Skeeter Hunt numbers will be issued starting this coming Sunday - which is not only Father's Day here in the US, but also the First Day of Summer for all of us in the Northern Hemisphere.

Have you sent in your e-mail?  I've gotten only a few, so far. You don't have to wait until Sunday to request a number - but that is the day when I will start posting them to the roster.

A word to all those who have already requested a Skeeter number - In addition to having your name and call posted on the Skeeter Hunt roster, you WILL receive a confirming e-mail from me with your number, some time on Sunday. If you have already applied and do not have your number by Monday morning, let me know! In fact, throughout this process, ALL applicants will receive a confirming e-mail which will include their Skeeter number.

Now.....here's my pledge to all of you who participate in the NJQRP Skeeter Hunt.

You go out of your way to join in on the fun. Some of you travel some distance to find the right spot - some of you operate from home or your back yards. But no matter where you operate from, you are the ones on the air, making the NJQRP Skeeter Hunt a success.

I will always do my level best to get your scores (and soapbox comments) posted in a timely manner. I can tell you right off the bat, that since log summaries are due two weeks after the event, you won't see anything for at least those first two weeks. But after that, I will get all that good stuff posted as fast as I can without sacrificing accuracy and completeness.

You, the participants, deserve as much. And if for some reason, I can't make this self imposed deadline, I'll communicate that to you and will let you all know so that you're not left in the dark, scratching your heads, wondering what's going on. You make the effort, you want to see how you did and how you stacked up amongst your peers. You want to see how that new rig or new antenna performed for you - I get that, and will do my best to let you see how it all panned out.

Certificates and plaques take a bit longer. But again, I will do my best to get those out within a couple months following the event. Just so you all know, Skeeter Hunt swag is available through CafePress. All proceeds go to help pay for paper, envelopes, ink, and postage.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!

From QRP-L this morning:

Today at 9:38 AM

E-mails are starting to roll in - so I wanted to make an early announcement.



Yes! There will be a Skeeter Hunt in 2015.  It will be held on Sunday, August 9th. Skeeter numbers will be issued starting on the "First Day of Summer", which will be Sunday June 21st - the weekend before Field Day.

There is one major rule change for this year - there will be no extra bonus points for working DX stations this year.  As many of you know, the Skeeter Hunt seems to always coincide with the "Work All Germany" contest, and in years past, working a DX station was worth 3 points.  Several Skeeters in the Mid-West and on the West coast pointed out that this is an unfair advantage to East coast Skeeters. After considering it, I have come to agree with this, and have eliminated that extra DX bonus.  The playing field will be much more equal this year.

The Bonus word for this year is "CULICIDAE", which is the Latin word for the family of insects that mosquitoes belong to.  Work enough call signs that include those letters and you can garner yourself another 100 points. There's an "L" in there and I will be happy to be the official "L" provider for the Hunt. Hi! (I think Don K3RLL among others, will also be happy to give away "L"s, too.)

I am having a bit of trouble with the QSL.NET webpage, so for all the details of this year's Skeeter Hunt, you can go to my Skeeter Hunt page of this blog - http://w2lj.blogspot.com/p/njqrp-skeeter-hunt.html.

I am hoping to have the QSL.NET problems ironed away by this weekend, but then again, you never know.

72 de Larry w2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!