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“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans”.

Yes.  The original plan today was for self indulgence – to spend all afternoon playing in the QRP ARCI Fall QSO Party.  Needless to say, it didn’t happen.  Not by a long shot.

There was grocery shopping to get done, lawn mowing and leaf clean up to get done, baking to be done for the Sacred Heart Music Ministry bake sale tomorrow.  All things that had to get done, which left me not much time on the radio.

After dinner, I have gotten on the air and have made some contacts on 20 and 80 Meters.  40 Meters would be nice but the RTTY’ers are once again swallowing up the band all the way from 7.040 to 7.100 MHz.  Wow, I remember in my RTTY contesting days in the 90’s we didn’t dare come below 7.060 MHz.  Times have changed.

I will go back down to the shack in a bit; but wanted to share something I found in the basement while calling “CQ QRP’ looking for contacts.

I found some old licenses. These three each have one of the call signs that I have held.

The top one is a KA2DOH one, and this is the license I received after upgrading to General in the Summer of 1979.  The N2ELW one is from when I applied for a General Class call in 1983.  Got this one in August of 1983 and shortly thereafter upgraded to Advanced on October 18th, 1983.  The reason I remember that date so well is that’s the date of my parent’s Wedding Anniversary.  If they were both alive, they’d be celebrating their 60th this year.  Both of these licenses were from back in the days when the license term was only five years.

The W2LJ one is the license that I carried before I renewed two years ago.  I found the CSCE’s (for you non-US Hams, those are Certificates of Successful Completion of Exams) from when I upgraded to Extra all the way back on March 1st, 1993.  Next year will be 20 years as an Extra and this year will mark my 34th as a Ham – sure doesn’t feel that long!

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