The First 100 Years Are The Hardest

POTA  Activation #68 was a success, with last week's trip to Indiana.   Big Walnut - Tall Timbers Trail State Nature Preserve is about 45 minutes west of Indianapolis, surrounded by large corn fields.   11 states down, and 39 to go but no rush! I only made 1 QSO in the first 30 minutes, before deciding to shut down or try another area in the park.   As I was packing up I realized I had forgotten to attach the counterpoise to the Elecraft AX1 antenna.  That made a huge difference!   30 minutes later and I had 14 contacts, all on CW before my quick hour ran out and I had to leave to visit extended family.  Not a record outing by any means but happy to get Indiana in the books. 73,  Chris de WX7V Rig - Elecraft KX3,  AX1 antenna, 20M, CW.  3d Printed Antenna Window Mount

I'll be QRV in Indiana this weekend, and wanted to freshen up my POTA travel rig, especially after the challenges on my last few trips activating NM and NV.  Finding a place to activate, in a limited amount of time calls for rapid deployment capabilities to maximize time on the air. I'll be taking the Elecraft KX3, a 3AH Bioenno LiFEPO4 battery, and will be using the "compromise" AX1 antenna.  I've also set up my laptop with flrig to enable CAT control for the KX3.   Finally, I've also printed the AX1 antenna window mount from Printables.com .   The mount worked perfectly with my KX3 and AX1 combo.  Made a test run at the local city park just down the street from my house in Dallas.   Called CQ on both 20 and 17M. Got good RBN spots in US and EU.  Spun the dial and heard a lot of strong signals.    Loaded HAMRS Pro, flrig on the laptop and made some very quick POTA hunting contacts with good signal reports from MI, UT...

 For visited US-6596 to set up for this years Support Your Parks annual activators event.   The band conditions were great, and 20M especially active.  Was not hard to get my first 10 just by hunting other activators, without even calling P2P.   32 contacts in all, all on CW, including on DX contact in Spain.  Also worked Junie N1DUC in SC, K7SHR in WY, KA0LDG and AE5X in ND and WA0WWW in MT.  Also nabbed the easier to work states including CO, FL, IA, NE, MA, ME, MI, MO, NC, NY, NJ , OH and UT.    Equipment today was the Yaesu FT-991a, ATAS-120a on the truck.  I used FLrig for USB CAT control from my laptop running the newly rewritten HAMRS Pro logging application.    Temp was mid-80s, but the cross breeze thru the open windows in the truck made the weather fairly pleasant!   73,   Chris de WX7V

ARRL Field Day is in the logs! Temp outside was in the low 90s but felt like 100 here in North Texas . Outside I operated for 4 hours as 2B - 100W, though the first 12 Ah LiFePO4 battery only last about 2 hours. I swapped to my fully charged 15 Ah backup was able to continue without much of a delay. I had 3 portable antennas set up for field day: a Spark Plug EFHW antenna supported by a 19 ft spiderbeam push up mast ; a Chameleon Tactical Delta loop mounted on a ground stake, and the Wolf River Coil mounted on a tripod with telescoping vertical whip and 6 radials. I was able to get good SWR matches for 20 and 15M for all three antennas, but the sparkplug was easily the best field day performer in terms of contacts. The spark plug is rated for 100w but I noticed some of the hot glue was melted off the toroid when I was packing it up. For Sunday morning I switched to 1D -100W, so that I could work 80M and 40M before sunrise and get the 5 call area sections - I go them...

While 15M is not as packed as the other bands for the CQ WPX Contest, the reach is much broader.  This is what I was able to hear in past 5 minutes from WX7V/5 RBN spotting node.  The hex beam pointed North from Texas.     Condx: Kp: 1 (Quiet)  A: 5  SFI: 130 Sunspot: 105 73 Y'all - Chris de WX7V

  The CQ WPX Contest is still going strong as 21:55z.   The states heard by my WX7V/5 RBN Node for past 5 minutes is unbelievable!  While I didn't join in this contest is great to see the airwaves alive with the sound of CW!   73,  Chris de WX7V Condx:  Kp: 1 (Quiet)  A: 5  SFI: 130 Sunspot: 105

 This is the 10M opening as heard from my RBN spotting node WX7V/5 for the past 30 minutes.   The Hexbeam is pointed about 120 °  SE from Dallas.   The signals are FB on 10M band as we reach solar maximum for Solar Cycle 25, which began in December 2019.   We're midway thru the current phase of the sun's 11-year cycle of activity.  Solar Cycle 25 is expected to reach its peak, or solar maximum, sometime around 2025.  While this is my 54th trip around the sun, this is my first time to experience the solar cycle as a Ham. I got my ticket in May 2020.    73, Chris de WX7V    Condx:  Kp: 1.67 (Quiet)  A: 7  SFI: 122 Sunspot: 122

Tonight 40M is alive with CQ for the annual CQ WPX Contest.  CQ WPX CW is the largest “everyone can work everyone for points” CW operating event in the world.  At of 2:39 UTC this is my WX7V/5 Spotter node for past 30 minutes. Condx:  Kp: 2 (Quiet)  A: 7  SFI: 120 Sunspot: 99 Check out the panadapter on my Flexradio 6600! The waterfall looks awesome!  73, Chris de WX7V

Activated US-3001 Copper Breaks State Park in northwest Texas again with my Dad, who turns 80 this year! I used the new HAMRS Pro v2.37.1 for the first time with flrig 2.0.05 for rig integration which worked perfectly with the  Yaesu FT-991a,  ATAS-120a. Combo of CW and SSB.   Bands were very challenging to say the least.    73,  Chris de WX7V

After being dead most of the day for the SKCC Weekend Sprintathon (WES) 20M finally opened up on Saturday afternoon between US and Europe.  Running 80 Watts with Hexbeam pointed NE / abt 45d from TX Made some FB contacts Bob F6EJN /FRA, David CT7AUP / POR, and Paul G4AFU /ENG.   Also got Alan KL3E / AK.  .   CondX:  Kp: 2 (Quiet)  A: 12  SFI: 134 Sunspot: 70 73, Chris de WX7V

Had some FB QSOs this morning with Take-San (JR2IUB), Masa (JH4XVN/0), Mark (VK3MJ) and Kev (VK3KEV).  My key this was the W1SFR Slater which is my favorite cootie / sideswiper. Rig Flexradio 6600 running 80w; Ant Hexbeam up 35ft/10m, beaming 270d west from Dallas.  Condx: KP 2.33 (Quiet), A:5 SFI 154 SN 134.  Temp 23C / 73F.  Rain expected later today. The bands have been in great conditions past few days.  73 Chris de WX7V

You can set up chrome to automatically open Gmail to create emails directly from any mailto: link.    This configuration makes it convenient to compose emails from other weblinks and applications you might need to use to compose emails with the email address, subject and body of the text populated automatically. Follow these steps to set up gmail as the default email protocol handler in chrome browser. Close any open Gmail tabs. Type chrome://settings/handlers into your address bar and press enter. Remove any entries shown here. Make sure "Allow sites to ask to become default handlers for protocols" is enabled. Close this tab. Launch Gmail and you should now see a diamond icon at the right of the address bar. Click that to set Gmail as your default email handler. If you don't see the diamond icon to the right if the address bar, you may need to quit and relaunch Chrome for the change to take effect.   You should see this if the email protocol hander has been set up ...

I had a FB QSO with Tim Hale K5OHY from Midland TX the other day, and browsed his QRZ page as I normally do.   Amongst the pictures of activations, rigs and keys I found a link to the the RBN Analysis Tool he created that allows you to input a callsign, grid, and choose a date for the tool to analyze.  The result is an interactive map that is fun to play with and visually appealing.  You can also download the results for viewing offline.    Tim is hosting the application on Streamlit's cloud based hosting/application development platform.  You can find more information on his home page on QRZ. Here's the link to my signal report from 3.27.25.   https://first100years.blogspot.com/p/k5ohys-rbn-signal-mapper-wx7v-32725.html

 I had a lot of fun working 12M today.   Many good DX contacts as you can see from my log below.   KP 1.67 (Quiet), A:25 SFI 180 Sunspot: 147.    We're at the height of Solar Cycle 25  which is expected to peak in activity in 2025.   The solar minimum between Solar Cycle 24 and 25 - the period when the sun is least active - happened in December 2019, when the 13-month smoothed sunspot number fell to 1.8   Solar maximum is expected in July 2025, with a peak of 115 sunspots. QSO Map RBN Spots on 12M calling CQ WX7V