I was long overdue for some portable QRP, so I went out twice over the weekend. As a bonus, we had some beautiful Fall weather here in southeastern Pennsylvania.
On Saturday, I headed up to my daughter’s property, intending to make some contacts in the Straight Key Century Club’s (SKCC) Weekend Sprintathon (WES) contest. I used my TR-35 with my 19-foot vertical mounted on my truck.
The bands, especially 20M, were in good shape, and I made a half-dozen SKCC contacts. There were a lot of Parks on the Air (POTA) activators, so I spent most of my time hunting them. The Pennsylvania QSO Party was also going on, and I logged a few of them, too.
On Sunday, I went for a bike ride on the Schuylkill River Trail and stopped in a park for a little radio time. This time I used my newly acquired (tr)uSDX with my ground-mounted 19-foot vertical.
The bench I was sitting on was getting full sun from time to time, which made reading the radio’s display a challenge. There were some loud signals on 20M that seemed to overload the radio’s front end. I could have used some attenuation, but, not being able to read the display clearly, I didn’t attempt to navigate the menus. (Note to self: Stay in the shade next time.) Despite these challenges, I logged three SKCC stations receiving good signal reports from each of them.
Nothing really exciting this weekend, but it was great to get back out portable again.
73, Craig WB3GCK
WB3GCK QRP Amateur Radio 