Amateur Radio This Week: 2024.16

This weekend was the NM QSO Party. Friday night, I prepared for the contest by clearing out my voice recorder app on my phone and then updating all of my logs and DX4Win.

Saturday morning, I got off to a late start. I started out the day by running Sandoval county on 20 meters near my house in the Crown Vic. I made 15 or so contacts and then headed south to Bernalillo.

In Bernalillo, I tried running both Bernalillo county and the Petroglyphs park. For whatever reason, it took me forever to get 15 contacts. I sat at the park for at least an hour, and finally got 15 and was ready to move on.

Valencia county had no such park. I sat in a Circle K parking lot for well over an hour, knocking out some contacts there. I also talked to another station that was located in Valencia county, and debated trying to meet up with them in person, but decided I was already far enough behind.

I stopped at the Sevilleta and ran the park and Socorro county. Once again, it took forever to get my fifteen contacts. I left the park and then stopped by NMT campus to mess around with something in my office.

I brought up a map of counties and saw that it would not be possible to make it to another county, regardless of which way I went before the contest ended. I decided instead to stay in Socorro and finish out the contest. By the end of the contest, conditions on 20 meters had improved drastically, and I made nearly 20 contacts in the last 15 or so minutes of the contest, including several stations in the Czech Republic, who was running their own contest.

My logbook has been updated, but I need to get my DX4Win log and submit the contacts.

Today, I spent the shuttle ride talking with the Tech Amateur Radio Association (TARA) Vice President. We are making plans for next year’s club, as we only have one more meeting for this year. I will update this blog with those plans later on.

Thank you for reading my post.