[Today’s run: 4 and 3/4 miles]
Over the weekend I finished breaking and repairing the old NCX-5 and got it all buttoned back up. A big circular exercise. One lasting improvement is that I put a grommet on the power cable. I happen to have a handy supply of grommets. Not everyone can say that.
After all of that fun I cleared off the radio desk and put the old TS-820 in primary position. I got the TLF logging program going on the old laptop and started to do a little contesting. This weekend was the big CQ WW DX CW contest. [translation: CQ magazine sp0nsors the WorldWide DX (distance) CW (morse code) contest] This particular contest is a good one for contacting new countries around the globe. I picked up a some good ones: Shetland Islands, Guam, Iceland are a few I remember.
I will need to tidy up my contest log in the next couple of days and send it in. Then I can also send it to the LogbookOfTheWorld (LoTW) on the ARRL website and see if I get any QSLs that way (QSL: confirmation of contact)
I’m over 100 countries in LoTW now. If I wanted to pay for the ARRL to send me a DXCC plaque I could do that. Maybe someday I will.
I think the average man-on-the-street would be surprised that someone in Iceland spends a weekend in November trying to manage a pile-up of people from around the world attempting to contact them via morse code. The same time as a guy from Guam is doing the same. See, lots of people all around the world have things in common.
Oh, and I got a shipment of real QSL cards today from the Zero-Land card burro. Here’s an example, a card from a contact in last year’s CQ WW DX CW Contest:
