KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

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Operating notes: Gutter antenna, RAC contest, 161 countries worked

Posted: 29 Dec 2018 07:37 PM PST
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/kb6nu...m_medium=email


Over the past 15 years, Ive worked Wink, WA8KOQ, 20 times. and every single
time, hes been using his gutter antenna. I always get a kick out of working
him. Now, hes got a picture of his antenna on his QRZ.Com page.



Since hes been using it so long, I asked him during our last QSO a couple
of days ago if hes had to do any special maintenance on it. He replied that
no, he hasnt really done any maintenance on it in all the years hes been
using it.
RAC Winter Contest

As you all know, Im a very casual contester. Well, last night, I got sucked
into the RAC Winter Contest. It was a blast. I made 64 contacts in about an
hour and 20 minutes and spent a bit of time actually running a frequency.
They key, of course, is that you can make contacts with anyone, anywhere in
this contest.

One thing that occurred to me while I was letting the N1MM contest logging
software call CQ is that I probably could do SO2R (single operator, two
radios) operation with a little practice. I could see where I could spend
the time spent calling CQ on one band making a contact on the other. That
might be something to play around with on Field Day, but maybe the rules
dont allow SO2R on Field Day.
LOTW Update

In July, after uploading to Logbook of the World, I checked my DXCC totals.
At that point, I had 159 total DXCC entities confirmed. After uploading to
LOTW a couple of days ago, I checked again. Now, Im up to 161 total
confirmed and 160 on CW.

That, of course, begs the question, what is the one DXCC entity that I have
on phone (or digital, I guess) that I havent worked on CW? And, which two
entities were confirmed since July? I dont recall working any new ones
since July.

Finally, as a point of comparison, I search this blog for any previous LOTW
reports. Back in November 2012, I noted that I had confirmed a total of 108
entities, with 73 on 30m CW.Â* Now, Im up to 125 on 30m. Overall, Ive
uploaded 22,320 QSOs, with 6,392 of them being confirmed.

The post Operating notes: Gutter antenna, RAC contest, 161 countries worked
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