Today is Tuesday and the Sun is out and even visible in Northern New
England. Tonight is the time to dust off the code key, polish the grille
on your microphone, and get on 222 MHz for some real ham radio. The
weather is rather brisk here in the Great White North. My plan is to
drag up my laptop and fire up the gear on 222.100 around 00:00 UT or 7PM
local time. I had a problem last week with internet and was not on any
chat page, but, with the help of WA1T, we got it running again. I will
monitor ON4KST (Region 2 144/432MHz) Chat page and be banging away
around 222.100 if all goes well.
We had some snow but it is not deep and I can still drive up to the VHF
QTH. This past weekend, a few of the boys were here operating in the
ARRL Ten Meter Contest and did pretty well. We worked quite a few VHFers
over the weekend. A few that I heard were N1DPM, WB2VVV, AC1J, N1JEZ,
Good Buddy Ron WZ1V, K2DRH, and even N2CEI at N4SVC in sunny Florida.
I didn't get to operate much as my CW skills are not good enough for how
well the station works. We had many pileups all weekend and made over
2500 contacts. Ops were WA1T and K1BX. We used WA1T as our call. I
noted that the temperature in the 222 shack area was 20 degrees. There
is no permanent heat in there. The other room with ten and six meters
was toasty warm. My 28 MHz amplifier also doubles as a room heater. It
actually got too warm! The 222 shack area has baseboard electric heat so
is only on when the diesel is powered up.
We are expecting more snow around the weekend so my attendance on
Tuesday nights is coming to a close. If it gets over 10 inches deep,
travel gets impossible up my road. The danger is in sliding off the road
and getting wedged into a tree. For now though things are on track for
this evening!CU on 222
Dave K1WHS
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