One of my very dear ham friends is a guy I've known for about 15 years now. I stumbled across him on 2m one day and he was excited about being newly licensed, and being on his way home from somewhere. We got to talking and I was discussing my obsession with QRP and CW and he accepted my offer to send him a copy of the Chuck Adams K7QO CW Course. Soon after, he was building a little QRP transceiver and was on the air.
His name is Ivin and he is W9ILF. Ivin is one of the best CW operators out there today, he runs circles around me and he has won many QRP events including our own State QSO party many times. Ivin and I both have K2's and between us I think we've owned every radio Elecraft ever put out, that didn't have a 3 in the name. Ivin also has a fabulous SWL 40+ that makes about 1.5 watts out and he has been QSOing with it almost daily for the last month. I have a Norcal 40A at about 1 watt and I have been knocking the dust of it from time to time as well. So we have a challenge. My HW-8 vs his SWL 40+ in a WAS drive. I am thrilled he has agreed to compete and frankly I don't care who wins. Hawaii and Alaska will be challenging but we have both worked them before on less than a couple of watts. There are some fantastic operators on the other end than can pull our pipsqueak signal out of the ether. For that I am thankful!
So, band conditions be damned, his antennas are better than mine, but I have mojo. Stay tuned for the weekly updates on the quest for WAS with radios that use less power than your night light.
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