Hello all, The AWA AM QSO party is this weekend from 2300 UTC Feb 16 to 2300 UTC Feb 17. I will be serving as one of the two flagship stations using the call W2AN from my home qth in ND. I will be on my homebrew transmitter which runs a single 810 modulated by 811A’s on 160, 75, and 40, and HK54’s modulated by 811A’s on 20. My tentative operating schedule is as follows: 7280 kHz from 2300 to 0200, 1945 kHz from 0200 to 0500, and 3870 +/- from 0500 until I run out of steam. On Sunday, I will be on 20 meters at 14330 all day starting at about 1500UTC. Hope to catch you on the air. Should be fun. 73, Ron W8ACR
I'll try to check it out, but those times are not good. The only night it covers is Saturday and that is normally NOT a night I sit around the house, in the ham shack or otherwise. The event ends before sundown (at my house anyway) on Sunday so that means no 75m on Sunday, most likely. I might be able to get on 40 or 20 in the day on Sunday and some early evening 75 Saturday.
I am certainly going to try, but it may be more of a monitoring party for me. I finally got an antenna back up and just set up a Flex 6500, but my new amp won't arrive until next week. The receive is phenomenal on the rig, but I've yet to be heard by anyone.
Well... by the time I figured out what I was doing wrong (wrong mic input selected), it was too late to edit my post.
It's pretty noisy in New York City today. I can hear several carriers coming and going but haven't been able to talk to anyone yet. Still trying on 20m. Will try 40m in a few. 40m good. Lots of interesting transmitters on the air right now.
Bands are fairly noisy in middle TN, as well. I've only managed 3 contacts so far, but am having a blast listening to several home-brew transmitters. I will be listening for you, but haven't heard any NY stations, as of now.
Ok! I had a couple nice QSOs but am off the air for now... lunch n stuff. WB3FAU was holding down 7.290 with a T3 and fun to chat with. K8JLY was running a pre war 2 homebuilt at limit and sounding great. His VFO is a Kc or two loosely goosey but hey... nice modulation. And bang... CRI just killed us all.
I've been chasing K8JLY all morning. He's fun to follow, with that crystal sweeping as it warms up when he keys, but my 20w carrier isn't getting back to him. I tried to work Al, W1VTP, but he could only pull half my call out of the noise on my best effort. I hard Don, K4KYV last night, but didn't call him as the freq was being used by one of the flagship stations.
I think he has a VFO, no crystal, and the furnace cycling at his house makes him stick somewhere, then scoot up for a while, etc. Fun while it lasted.
