Bzzz… All that buzzing you heard on the bands on Sunday was the annual running of the NJQRP Skeeter Hunt contest. Happily, I got home from my recent vacation in time to join in the hunt.
The theme of this year’s contest was “water – the breeding ground for Skeeters!” In the spirit of the theme, I headed down to Upper Schuylkill Valley Park along the Schuylkill River near Royersford, Pennsylvania.
It had been raining all morning and it was drizzling when I got to the park and started setting up. Because of the inclement weather, I opted to operate from inside my truck. I put my usual 19-foot vertical on the back of the truck and fired up my KX3. I tested the rig on 40M by working a SOTA station in Vermont and a special event station in Illinois.

As I was operating, a fellow was curious about my antenna and walked over to ask about it. As I started to explain what I was doing, we both recognized each other. As it turns out, we were childhood friends and grew up less than a block away from each other. He happened to be visiting in the area and took his grand-kids fishing in the river. We hadn’t seen each other in more than 40 years, so we spent a half hour chatting and getting caught up. If he hadn’t been curious about my antenna, we never would have noticed each other. What an amazing coincidence!

Back to the contest… I operated for about an hour and a half. There was some deep fading on the bands but 20M eventually seemed to open up a bit. I bounced between 40M and 20M, alternating between CQing and search & pounce. When it started raining again, I figured it was a good time to wrap things up. I ended up with 20 QSOs (18 skeeters) in 11 SPCs.
Here’s my log:
UTC BAND CALL MODE RST-S RST-R SPC SKEETER NUMBER 1703 40M N3AQC CW 559 449 PA Skeeter #77 1713 40M KD3CA CW 589 579 PA Skeeter #44 1720 40M VE2DDZ CW 569 559 QC Skeeter #35 1723 40M N8RVE CW 559 559 OH 5W 1727 40M WF4I CW 579 559 NC Skeeter #70 1733 40M WQ4RP CW 559 559 NC Skeeter #11 1804 20M W5IQS CW 559 559 TX Skeeter #170 1807 20M KF5RY CW 559 559 TX Skeeter #26 1811 20M NN9K CW 599 599 IL Skeeter #64 1817 20M AD0YM CW 599 449 MO Skeeter #16 1821 20M NE5DL CW 559 559 TX Skeeter #25 1825 20M NQ3N CW 599 579 FL Skeeter #141 1829 20M WB4OMM CW 579 579 FL Skeeter #98 1841 20M N5GW CW 599 569 MS 5W 1844 20M KD0V CW 569 559 MN Skeeter #99 1851 20M W3HZZ CW 559 559 GA Skeeter #131 1907 20M N0JBF CW 559 559 MO Skeeter #37 1913 20M K4BYF CW 599 549 FL Skeeter #107 1915 20M K4BAI CW 559 589 GA Skeeter #163 1920 40M NK9G CW 559 559 WI Skeeter #6
As always, the Skeeter Hunt was fun, even with the lousy weather. Thanks to Larry W2LJ and the NJQRP Club for once again putting on this great contest!
72, Craig WB3GCK
Craig,
What luck to run into that friend! We ran into horses and women along with skeeters! Fortunately, we had much better WX here in central NH. We had crappy rain the days before the contest.
https://w3atb.com/2018-nj-skeeter-hunt/
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