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OK - I've made the 2015 NJQRP Skeeter Hunt Scoreboard public, the results are as posted.

Congratulations to all of you who participated (you're all winners in my book!), but special congratulations to the "Top Five":

N3AQC - The North American QRP CW Club - First Place Overall - Top finish in PA by a multi-multi station - 14,380 points

KX0R - George Fuller - Second Place Overall - Top finish in CO - Top finish by a single op station - 13,652 points

N0SS - Mid-Missouri Amateur Radio Club - Third Place Overall - Top finish in MO - Top finish by a multi op - single TX station - 7,276 points

N3CU - Ken McIntire - Fourth Place Overall - Top finish in PA by a single op station - 6,148 points

K4YA - Myron Cherry - Fifth Place Overall - Top finish in TN - 6,084 points

The entire scoreboard can be viewed at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lcRvpNb2jwgyJsqruCdecNiWXNpi6yz2l4vvJucp0UE/edit#gid=307219926

We didn't do too badly this year. 170 Hams signed up for Skeeter numbers (a record) and we had 60 log summaries submitted. That's about a 35% return rate.

As promised, the soapbox page will come shortly and I will announce when it's ready for viewing. Most nights this week will be busy as I will be volunteering with my CERT team for crowd control duties, as the Barclay Golf Tournament is being played out at the Plainfield Country Club, which is about 1/4 mile from my house.  Look for the soapbox announcement some time next week.

Thank you to all of you who sign up and those who participate, and those who help me get the word out about the NJQRP Skeeter Hunt. I'm already looking forward to 2016's event! And as always, if any of you have any suggestions as to how this event can be improved, I'm always willing to listen. Changes were made this year due to someone's input from last year and there was a good suggestion made to me after this year's event which will result in a small change in the way QSO points are calculated next year. I'm all ears, guys!

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

courtesy: www.kcj-cw.com/

I am often brutally reminded of how much influence our Sun has on propagation, both good and bad!

Hoping to enjoy some further contest work and improve my ear-brain-keyboarding skills, I had prepared everything for this Saturday's 24-hour 'KCJ' Contest. The 'Keymen's Club of Japan' is an annual affair that seems to attract a lot of domestic JA activity, with bonus points when they work any DX stations. I checked my N1MM Logger software but it didn't seem to have the contest. I did find it in the program's UDC (User Defined Contests) section but had to download and install a unique 'Sections' file from a Japanese website, as the contest requires the Japanese to exchange their Prefecture abbreviations. I eventually had N1MM working perfectly for the KCJ contest and with the contest starting at 0500 locally, I tuned up everything for the normally excellent 40m path to Japan in the morning and went to bed.

courtesy: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

Rising just a few minutes before the contest start, a quick check of 40m indicated that something was not right ... not a JA to be heard, in fact almost no signals to be heard! Checking the web for more info, I quickly discovered a 'K' index of '7', indicative of very disturbed conditions. Along with a strong southerly pointed Bz, it seemed that we were in the middle of some strong auroral conditions ... back to bed with hopes of the afternoon 15 or 20m path to Japan being better.

The afternoon path never really materialized either. Normally, propagation between the west coast and Japan is very good, with lots of strong signals being the norm ... but not today. Over the course of several hours, only four JA stations found their way into my log, and they were all a struggle.

courtesy: http://wdc.kugi.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dstdir/index.html

The earth had been hit, rather unexpectedly, by another whopping 'coronal hole stream' and propagation was truly dismal. With only a smidgen of keyboarding practice, I had to admit defeat ... the Sun had messed things up once again, as it has been doing for the past year as Cycle 24 slowly slides downhill. Unfortunately there is always a lot more flaring and streaming on the way down than on the way up. Hopefully the Sun will soon get this out of its system and radio conditions will quiet down and stabilize for the upcoming fall and winter DX season.

There is one more chance left, this evening, to get in some more keyboarding practice. The 'Flying Pigs QRP Group' holds their monthly 'Run For The Bacon' CW QSO party, starting at 0100Z tonight. Non-members may also join in the fun by sending their 'power' level instead of a membership number ... so maybe I'll run into you tonight.


Now it's back to N1MM to reconfigure for the QRP Party and hope that old Sol will co-operate for the Sunday night crowd, but you know what they say about the 'best laid plans...'

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!