Surprise! WQ7T was N0AX in disguise. So disguised, as a matter of fact,
that I was not making a whole heckuva lot of QSOs.
WQ7T - Single-op, Low-Power, All-band
BAND Valid QSOs Points Prefixes
_____________________________________________________
80CW 20 92 10 novelty interest at 100W
40CW 108 196 55 a disappointment
20CW 382 525 265 languid and bittersweet
15CW 30 15 5 comatose, but not in the morgue
10CW 14 2 3 be still, my thundering heart...
_____________________________________________________
Totals 555 554 830 338
Final Score = 280540 points.
I was all ready to go early in the week; the antenna farm was under
control, all of the radios and associated PC functions were 100% ready,
and I had the day off to relax and build up energy.
BZZZZZT! "Mr. Silver, I checked your water meter and you're using an
extremely high amount of water. Let me know if you need help finding the
leak." Of course, the leak turned out to be under some vicious blackberry
bushes just over my pasture fence...requiring about 4 hours of digging and
poking just to figure out how in the H*** my water system was connected to
the main. Then more digging and bailing to fix the leak. Oh yes, and
some shovelling to fill it all back in. And then some practice shovelling
in case I might have forgotten how. And maybe just a little more
shovelling for old times' sake. Bah!
By 0000 I was exhausted...ready to hit the sack, er, bands! I managed
about twenty-something hours, but by and large was mentally out-of-it and
uninspired. When some friends offered to take our tribe sailing for a few
hours on Saturday afternoon, I ditched grinding through several hours of
zero-point QSOs and got out in the sun until right before sunset.
Twenty just kinda dribbled in up here...second layer of DX? What second
layer of DX? I just tuned past the loud Scandinavians over and over
again, finding an occasional nugget. Friday night brought a QSO with
3V8BB and HZ1AB...high points! Those were good for two hours of extra
adrenalin supplements! Never heard ZS8IR, although he apparently was
workable around 0850 on 20 Saturday night. (zzzzzzz...)
I called CQ on 80 for a while, scoring some JA's and out of the black
comes VK6HD! Thank you, Mike! More adrenalin supplement! Our cherished
forty-meter opening proved insipid, however, with 9M2JJ's usually S8-9
signal down around S4 and CQ-ing in my face. Not like CQ WW with HS7AS
bombing in until 11AM local time!
There was a seance on 10 and 15 with ghostly signals materializing and
vanishing. No surprises or adrenalin to be had there, with the exception
of a nice Es cloud over Montana somewhere providing some Minnesotans on
10 with loud signals.
Was it worse than a couple of years ago when the flares wiped it out? No,
but the anticipation of conditions like unto a year ago caused me more
distress, I think. That and the disappointment of getting clobbered by
Real Life Travail. I heard you guys on the Least Coast working lots of
Yurp...tell 'em we said "Hi!" ;-) We'll do the same for you to our
Japanese brethren ;-) ;-)
Yeah, and the sun was in my eyes, too! See you from WRTC and in the
August QSO parties...enjoy the summer everyone!
73, Ward N0AX/WQ7T (if you want a card for the prefix, send to me
directly at callbook address)
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