The First 100 Years Are The Hardest

I had fun on Sunday activating K-3007 Fairfield Lake State Park, Texas. My new HAMRS “Every Day is Field Day” hoodie kept me nice and warm! First activation of the new year with a goal of getting 15M going. Sadly I only logged 7 contacts in the first hour but was able to QSY and get a few three more contacts on 17m, then for fun a added a few P2P on 20 and 40M before calling it a day. Thank you for those who hunted and tried to hunt me. 15M was definitely tough today! Yaesu 991a, 100 watts into Chameleon Tactical Delta Loop. I got very good signal reports for those who could here me on 15M then worked a few more parks from on 15 when I got home. Next time I work 15M I’ll try my wolf river coil vertical. 73, Chris de WX7V

I really enjoyed the North American QSO Party this past weekend.  QSO parties are great for low power  (100W) operators like me, and the 12 hour format ensures I have time to do other things on the weekend.   I used Flexradio 6400, N3FJP NAQP Contest Log, and CW Skimmer to help with decodes.   All CW was sent from the PC using the Flexradio CAT Winkeyer emulation in ACLOG.   The first QSOs were made via CWX.   I then switched to FRrig which  works well for CWT.  But I found my rhythm by sending CW directly from the contest logger.   F1 set up to send WX7V, and F2 to send WX7V Chris TX.   I also configured additional function  keys to individually send Name, State and Tu 73 to resend specific elements of the exchange when necessary. The exchange is easy - listen for CQ,  toss out your call sign, then respond with Call sign, operator name and station location SPC (state, province or country),  then log the contact before moving on.   I worked six hours and completed 202 QSOs across 15M,