Starting to Make Some Contacts

Conditions have been somewhat better over the last several days. I did not have the opportunity to play radio yesterday. But between Sunday and today I now have 386 contacts in my log. I was doing very well in to PA and the Carolinas. However, I also worked as far west as LA. I also made contacts as far east as Moscow. Everything has been uploaded to www.eqsl.cc. I am going to have to keep working if I am going to break last year's record of 1000 contacts.

Band Conditions

The band conditions have been very poor the last two days. I made two contacts on April 23rd. One contact on the 24th and 12 today.

TW2010

The first intersection of good weather and free time was Monday. So I set up the TW2010 and hooked up the MFJ antenna analyzer. I bought the antenna in late January as a replacement to my Force 12 Sigma 5. Before Monday, I did not have an opportunity to test it out. When the weather was good I was busy. When I had free time, the weather was lousy. Well this last Monday the weather was good and I had free time.

The Antenna looks good. The only place the SWR was a little high was 17 meters (1.6:1). However, in retrospect this may have been due to the facts that I set up the antenna less than 20 feet from car and I did not feed the coax at a 45 degree angle to the antenna. When I get to St. Martin I will set it up properly. If the SWRs are still high, I can always use my tuner.