Memorial week we took Granny to Lake Loramie to camp, it had been several years since she has been able to go camping. The weather was a little chilly for her but I was happy with the cooler temperatures. The camp ground was not crowed during the week which made me happy.
This gave me a great opportunity to activate a park, It has been many years since I had conducted my first activation. The lot was pretty small compared to most. The short length made it harder to get a good antenna set up but I was able to make an inverted v with my small trail friendly end fed. I activated four days but I forgot about the change over at midnight ZULU so I ended up with a few failed activations. Definitely not a problem for me, I was just happy to do it. The first day I had some logging issues so I started using HAMRS. I had steered away from it because of the bad user stories, fortunately I did not have any problems with it. I was able to figure out the logging issue once I returned home so no lost logs! I was worried I would have to retype the whole log to get it corrected.
I made my first CW activation contact, it was a train wreck. It has been a long time since I had even made a CW contact so all the nerves were back. I chose to hunt most of the time instead of posting my activation so when the contacts were slowing with everyone on 20m I decided to check out the CW spots. I found one not going too fast and called him. He came back to me quickly, and I suddenly forgot everything. I thought I heard a “?” so I sent my call again. It was like I forgot how to use the key. Fortunately for me he kept it short and we ended the QSO quickly. This has encouraged me to try CW more. I am hoping to do a CW only activation some time soon. Maybe one day I will be comfortable using CW I have far too many kits that don’t get used.
NM8B Radio Room. 