Monday, August 26, 2013

Kansas QSO Party - 2013

As I have mentioned before, in May we moved our family from the Kansas City area to Wichita, KS.  While everything is unpacked and pretty well settled in, there is still some organizing that needs to be done.

This weekend we organizing the garage.  Last weekend I built shelves along one wall, and this weekend I finished painting the garage and installed some holders for shovels and tools.  The garage had never been painted, so that meant a coat of primer and then a coat of paint.  It looks fantastic!

Due to this project and other commitments, I was only able to work the last hour of the Kansas QSO Party on Sunday from 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm local time.

After reading about the event it looked like there were a number of special 1X1 calls.  I tuned around the bands and didn't hear a lot of activity on any band - again, this is with my portable QRP antenna strapped to my back deck - so that might be part of my problem with hearing stations due to noise and inefficiency of the antenna.

I did finally hear K0K on 20 meters - Jim (W0EB) was just north of me probably 20 miles.  I answered his CQ and I was in his log.  I must have caught him early on that band, because a pile-up quickly built on his call.

So I decided since it was late in the contest, I might be some new blood.  I decided to tune down a bit from K0K and call CQ with my 5 watts on 20 meters.  I was watching my spots on RBN and I was working good into the east coast.

So I setup a memory keyer with the CQ KSP call and starting calling CQ.

I was quickly answered, so I just kept calling CQ until the end of the contest.  In 50 minutes I worked a total of 9 station (including K0K).

I worked the following: K0K, N4PN, K7BX, W9OL, K7IA, AA6XV, W9MSE/M, K4BAI, NS2X.

It was a fun hour on the radio - no, I won't win anything, but it sure was fun!

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