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So this is what we’re looking at……

A possible Category 2 or 3 hurricane, which has not encountered ANY huge land mass to speak of, paralleling the coast, making an almost 90 degree left turn and slamming into the US, somewhere between the DelMarVa peninsula and Cape Cod.  Unfortunately, New Jersey looks like the prime target as of right now.

In addition, we will have Full Moon tides to deal with and the fact that Sandy has not hugged the coast line makes a huge difference.  If Sandy had hugged the coast, there’s the chance she could have weakened.  But she will be coming in directly from open water, in effect, making her a water siphon that is expected to drop anywhere from 4 to 8 inches of rain (or more) on us by the time she pulls out of here Tuesday night.

The South Plainfield CERT Team filled 600 sand bags with 1,500 pounds of sand; and distributed them to flood prone neighborhoods today.  We will resume again tomorrow; after another 2,000 pound load of sand is dropped of at the Department of Public Works tonight.

Personally, I am as about ready as I can be.  Loose objects outside around the house have been taken down and stowed.  Grocery shopping is done and we have enough food to last over a week – even longer if we have to ration.  There’s extra bottled water in the house and tomorrow, after showers are done, the bathtub will be cleaned and filled in order to serve as an emergency supply.

The freezer in the basement has been topped off with two huge bags of ice.  I have another two coolers loaded with ice, if needed.  Flashlights are ready and batteries have been bought.  Candles are ready also, should the electricity go out (and it most likely will at some point). The cars have been topped off with gas. The grill outside has propane and can be pressed into service to cook food, if needed

My lead acid batteries, which can power the HF rigs are all charged and ready to go. The HTs are charged and so are all the batteries.

I just hope, that by the grace of God Almighty, that this thing makes a right instead, and heads out to open seas.

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

I received a telephone call tonight from South Plainfield’s Director of Emergency Management.  He wanted to know if I can come down to the Emergency Operations Center on Saturday from 12:00 Noon to 4:00 PM to help distribute sand bags to the various South Plainfielders who want them.  Possibly Sunday, too. Good thing I wasn’t planning on participating in the CQWW DX SSB Contest this weekend.

All of this in anticipation of Hurricane Sandy arriving sometime early next week.  Of course, I offered my assistance immediately.  Hurricane Irene is still fresh in my mind, even though it’s been 14 months since she graced us with her presence.  She was the most destructive storm to hit New Jersey – ever.

The forecasts are all over the map, if you’ll pardon my pun. Anywhere from nothing but some strong wind, to the possibility of a “White Hurricane” if a cold front from Canada moves into place at just the proper time.  We had a “White Hurricane” back in 1991, the much vaunted “Perfect Storm”.  I still vividly remember THAT one and am not looking for a repeat performance.  I thought those were supposed to be “once in a lifetime” events, anyway!

Here’s hoping and praying that Sandy is so impressed with her pre-arrival media coverage, that she turns out to be nothing more than a big fizzle!

By the way, got on the air tonight looking for some good DX in advance of the big DX contest this weekend. I didn’t check out the TelNet Cluster; but I suspect all the DXers must have been hanging out in the SSB portion of the bands as there was nothing doing in the CW sections. Dead as a door nail. Can you say, “Disappointing”?

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

I got up this morning for my daily walk – well, actually, I don’t do a daily walk, anymore.  Saturday and Sunday, I get up early and go for a walk. Monday through Friday, I spend a half hour on my elliptical machine in the basement – but I digress.

I woke up this morning to the beginnings of a beautiful day!  Yesterday was positively tropical, hot and humid, with the threat of severe thunderstorms and tornadoes all day. One minute it would be sunny, the next it was dark and threatening. While other areas in the North East were not so lucky, I praise God, that in South Plainfield, all we got was some really heavy rain from about 5:00 to 6:00 PM yesterday evening.  After that, the temperatures dropped, dry air moved in and you can honestly say that today is one of the “Ten Best of the Year”.

Weather issues aside, the object of this post is to relate that I did something yesterday that I have not done in a very long time – about 9 years to be exact.

I made a contact using SSB.

Yes, I know – totally out of character; but I did it and surprised myself in the process.  After mowing the lawn yesterday, I had a little bit of down time, so I went down to the shack to spend a little bit of quality time behind the rig.  Alas, 12 Meters, 15 Meters and 17 Meters were a vast wasteland.  20 Meters was not bad; but had very little activity in the CW portion of the band.  So I decided to switch the K3 over to USB, and went “up” the bad to see if perhaps there were any special event stations doing their thing.

Didn’t hear any of those, either.  But I was hearing a lot of loud European stations working the WAE contest. So I thought to myself, “I wonder if one might hear me …….. hmmmmm”.  I twiddled the dial looking for a particularly loud one – there were a good number of them.  Then I heard a call sign that sounded interesting – 3Z2X.  AC log informed me that it was Poland.  All the better, the country that my ancestors came from!

Using my noodle, I pumped the K3 up to 10 Watts – still QRP by definition (I may be a little crazy; but I’m not insane – SSB and QRO? No way!). Then, I picked up that funny looking little box that you speak into – I think it’s called a microphone and pressed the button thingy on the side.  Announced my call sign and actually heard him call me back!  I gave the contest exchange, got his and then sat there kind of amazed.  10 Watts via SSB all the way to Poland – and he heard me!  We spoke to each other, exchanged information and said good-bye. It worked. I was amazed.

I made a few more and it was fun but it wasn’t enough to convert me from being a dyed-in-the-wool CW op.  But it did hold out hope for me that, in the future, I may be able to work Special Event stations that choose not to have CW as one of the modes that they employ.  It also encouraged me to maybe dip a toe into the pool when the QRP-ARCI holds their annual QRP SSB Sprint.  I never participated in one of those before.  This year just might be different.

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

Worked a new one for me.

I heard 5N7M from Nigeria on 30 Meters and it took a little doing; but I got an answer for my efforts. Nigeria is a new one for me – never worked ’em before – via QRP.

This brings me up to (I believe) 112 DXCC entities worked via QRP and somewhere in the neighborhood of 138 DXCC entities worked over all.  I really have to do a serious recap accounting one of these days.

As hot as 12 Meters was on Saturday, the bands seemed pretty crummy yesterday and today. And that was matched by the weather here in Central NJ.  I participated, along with my CERT Team, in providing communications for the South Plainfield Annual Labor Day Parade and got downpoured on twice. And like the Ham that I am, I was more concerned about the radios getting wet than me! Fortunately, that was quite early in the morning; and by the time the parade kicked off, it was only overcast, with no precipitation.

Our annual fireworks display should kick off in about an hour and a half, really signalling the end of summer.  While it’s been a pretty crummy year so far, personally, I still hate to see summer come to an end.  It’s my most favorite season of all.  But the nights are getting longer; and the maple in the back yard is already starting to shed its first leaves.

Time stands still for no man.

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

Ol’ Man Murphy seemed to be my constant companion today!  I foolishly thought I had everything under control.  I was given yet another lesson in humility today.

I got to the park right at about 12:45 – a lot later than intended.  Some home things came up, and I had to take care of them first. Really no biggie, but still, an unintended delay.

So I get to the park, and get out the wrist rocket.  Load the pouch with my 1 ounce fishing weight, pull  back and aim for a convenient branch. Instead of “BWWWWAAAANG”, I got a loud “SNAP”. One of the elastic bands broke.  OK, take a deep breath, examine the situation. Thanks to the Swiss Army Knife that I always carry, I was able to make some field repairs that would hold me over.  I finally got the wire up like I had it last year.  I hooked up the KX3 and could not get a decent match!  I have no idea why; but I figured I would worry about that later as I was already seriously into the first hour of the contest.

ALWAYS have a back up!  I ran over to the Jeep and pulled out the Buddistick.  W3FF’s antenna literally saved my bacon this afternoon.  I got it set up and got going, one hour into the proceedings.

After that, the afternoon went well and was a success.  I’m never in these things to win – just to have fun and rack up some QSOs.  In all, I made thirty contacts. Twenty six were on 20 Meters and four were on 40 Meters.  I was a bit disappointed with the lack of activity on 40 Meters.  I thought there would be a lot more, especially as the afternoon wore on.  I kept checking 7.040 MHz as well as 7.030 MHz, but except for the four QSOs that I made, there was nothing to be heard.

Something to do before the Skeeter Hunt in two weeks.

Figure out why the wires wouldn’t match.  AND, make new wires out of something more flexible and light.  I was using some wire that I had gotten from an SK’s estate sale that would have been more appropriate for a permanent wire antenna.  I need to get something better for portable ops.

The little blue LiPO battery held up great!  No problems with it going low voltage on me.  By making sure the KX3’s LCD backlight was off, I was able to stay at the full “QRP Gallon” of 5 Watts out for the entire time I operated.

The filtering in the KX3 made an easy job out of working stations that were right on top of each other.  In fact, at one point, John K4BAI came back to me informing me that we had already worked each other. John, if you’re reading this, I was working someone else who was so close to you, it was ridiculous. Yet, the KX3 was able to single the other op out for me with no problem.

Even though there was some frustration, the day turned out well.  And, no more than a half hour after I got home, the skies got dark, the lightning and thunder started and we had real heavy downpours.  But by that time, I was already adding my QSOs to AC Log on this netbook.

Hope you had a great time with FOBB today!  Looks like Jim W1PID did – here’s his report:

http://www.w1pid.com/fobb12/fobb12.html

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

A new rig is a thing of beauty. Whether it be Elecraft, Kenwood, Yaesu, Icom or kit built or homebrewed, once you get it on the air, it’s definitely fun! And before the novelty wears off, quite addictive.

After watching some TV with Cara and Joey, I headed down to the shack for about another 1/2 hour of operating time before heading off to the sack.  Most of that time was spent becoming familiar with knobs, functions and controls; but I also did manage to work OZ1HDF and RK3ER on 30 Meters.

Even though I now have microphones for the K3 and KX3, I doubt that I will be spending much of any time with any mode other than CW.  Sending and receiving Morse is still what Amateur Radio is all about for me.

July 15th is the Sussex Hamfest up in Sussex County, NJ – which is the extreme Northwest corner of the state. The Sussex Hamfest is one of the best in the state; and normally I can’t go as we’re usually in Lake George that weekend.  This year I can go and am planning on it.  Some things I will need – 1/4″ to mini jack stereo adapter so that I can use my earbuds on the K3.

With the K2, I had a single, amplified speaker.  I think I will have to get a set of amplified stereo speakers so that I can take advantage of the stereo sound the K3 can provide.  An inexpensive set of computer speakers should do the trick and those can usually be found quite easily (and cheaply!) at hamfests.

Off to bed now, tomorrow is a work day, and unfortunately,  I am anticipating tomorrow and Friday to be as bad as yesterday was.

By the way, it’s 11:30 PM and it’s still 84F (29C) – ugh!  In a few of the QSOs that I had today, the ops on the other end told me that it was well over 100F (38C) at their locations, so I guess I should be grateful it wasn’t that bad here!

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

Years ago, that was the title of a song by Buster Poindexter.  That title is very apropos for this coming weekend.  Just to give you a little of our flavor – here it is 10:20 PM and it’s still 82F (28C) outside.  When I got to my car to come home from work, the Jeep’s thermometer read 101F (38C). I thought to myself, “Yeah, that’s because the car was sitting in the sun, it will cool down as I move and I’ll get the real reading in a few minutes”.  Ten minutes later, the temperature did indeed drop, all the way down to 100F. One degree!

This weekend is going to be brutal as this is supposed to last right through Monday. It’s a good thing we had the air conditioning fixed last week. At least we’ll be able to sleep in relative comfort. No matter how bad it gets, though, in my mind this is better than 6 inches of snow and 22F outside.  I’ll deal with this any day of the week!

Two cool (pardon the pun) events took place tonight.  First, yours truly, one of the most inept people on the face of the Earth when it comes to figuring out COM ports and such stuff, managed to download the KX3 utility from Elecraft. Not only that; but I got it to work!  I downloaded from the Elecraft server and then uploaded into my KX3, the latest version of firmware. And I discovered that using the KX3 utility, that you can enter a start up banner. So now, when I turn the rig on, where the secondary VFO display normally is, you see “W2LJ’s KX3” for a few seconds before that changes over to the normal VFO display.

Second cool event:

I completed the K3 inventory. Everything was there! Well, just about everything – I am missing three #6 split ring washers.  But I can pick those up (or an equivalent) at a local hardware store. None of the screws were missing.  In fact, there was OVER the amount needed and that does NOT include the extras that can be found in the Elecraft spare hardware bag. The picture above does not do the situation any justice.  When I opened up that big cardboard box, it was jam packed with bags, envelopes, static bags and other things.  By the time I was done, the entire table was covered with Elecraft goodies – you couldn’t even see the table cloth.

I am hoping to start the build tomorrow night after all Saturday’s chores are done.  I am also hoping for a chance to run over to the park on Sunday with the KX3 a battery and some wire,  If I get the opportunity, I will post myself on QRPSPOTS and maybe we’ll run into each other on the air!

By the way, we’re up to 75 Skeeter numbers given out for the NJQRP Skeeter Hunt to be held on Sunday, August 12th,  I’ll be handing out numbers right up to the day before; but don’t be part of the last minute rush! Get yours today by sending an email to [email protected] 

And no, to answer all of you out there who are concerned about FOBB – I have not heard anything new. I have no inside information; and in fact, there may be more of you out there who have better info than I do!

72 de Larry W2J
QRP – When you care to send the very least!