Ready for Spring!

So it's been a couple months since my last update, winter showed up and the snow fell and the temperatures dropped and the sun disappeared by 5:30PM around here.   No POTA activating for me since November.  The good news is the forecast today is for 60F degrees, but cloudy. No chance of snow or sub freezing temperatures.  On top of that we go back to Daylight Savings Time in less than 2 weeks.  That will make it daylight until almost 7:45PM and will give me plenty of time in the late afternoon, after work, to go activating a POTA park or two.  To say I am chomping at the bit would be putting it mildly. 

So this morning I brought out the old K1 and fired up on 40m.  The band sounded lively and I needed to check the readout calibration.  I tuned to 7056 Khz and sent our a couple of CQ's, Reverse Beacon has me at 7056.2 Khz.  So I definitely need to check the other bands.  I built my K1 in May-June 2002, so it's almost 20 years old now...def in need of a tune up. 

My last CQ was answered by Dave N9ZXL up in Rockford Illinois, about 250 miles from my QTH, and I was running 5w.  Dave gave me a 569 and I gave him a 579.  The QSB was pretty bad so we didn't really get to have a rag chew, we said our 73's and ended the QSO. 

So like usual I went to QRZ to look Dave up. Wow. Dave has a machine shop in his basement and makes keys and bugs.  They are very nice looking.  Check out N9ZXL on QRZ to take a look for yourself.  Dave is a US Navy veteran radioman, and his bio on QRZ is interesting reading.  Just goes to show what kind of interesting folks are out there waiting to talk to us. 

That's it for now....I hope my next posting is about my latest POTA activation! 

73 de KB9BVN