This weekend was the FT Challenge.
I made about 112 contacts over 14 unique “letter grids”. I operated QRP (<5W), single operator, single radio. We scored points for each contact plus each 3000km distance on a contact, and the multiplier was that number of unique letter grids. I uploaded my logs, and it’ll probably be a while until I see an official score, but I figure I probably got about 2000 points.
I got Japan, Colombia, and Uruquay on 12m FT8 today. I got so much Japan from Hawaii, I assumed I’d not see it for a long time. Winter is good in 10M and 12M.
I was able to hear a 10M beacon today at 28193.180kHz:
E E E E E VVV DE VE4ARM / B AMATEUR RADIO MUSEUM / AUSTIN MANITOBA / EN 09 E E E
I stumbled into a couple Olivia signals
on 14071kHz,
and on a good guess,
I fired up fldigi,
and I was able to decode them.
They were Olivia-8/250 encoded.
I found lots of
good documents on Olivia
to read some mmore about where they’re likely found.
I went to Hawaii for the first couple weeks of November 2024.
I packed up all the POTA radio gear and headed out to fly to Hawaii. I carried all my radio gear and big battery in my carry-on backpack.
I added a few repeaters, and scanned 2M, but didn’t hear anyone on my UV-K6.
I started out operating FT8 at the resort with the EFRW (12.5M) strung between columns on the patio. I could reach stations in Hawaii, Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Oregon on 10m, 12m, 17m, and 20m. I had to turn up to 8W to get heard.
For parks, I operated 6 parks and 2 trails across 2 islands: beaches, lava fields, and volcanos.
On 2024-11-04, I activated US-0753, Pu’uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park, with the EFHW for 40m strung across trees in the picnic area near the rocky coast. I accidentally split the day, since I wasn’t familiar with the timezone offset. Fortunately, I had enough contacts for an activation in each of the 2 days. Much of the west coast of the big island also counts as US-4565, Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail.
On 2024-11-08, I activated US-0037, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, with EFHW stretched from a shelter and picnic table to a nearby tree on West Rim Road in the park. I struggled for a bit from my start at 10am. Conditions got better near 2pm local time, and I finished up my activation while having lunch with Emily.
On 2024-11-10 I went to US-2214, Kekaha Kai State Park, after running around a bit to find a spot. I wanted to work fast, and there were no trees in the vast lava field, so I deployed the whip and coil bungied to the fishing pole and the grill of the car. That activation went pretty fast.
On 2024-11-13, I visited US-0739, Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park, which is also US-4565, Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail. It had closed an earlier day, so I couldn’t activate that day. It was good, because I hiked the mile or so to setup on the beach and toss the counterpoise for the vertical whip into the ocean.
On 2024-11-16, I walked across Waikiki to US-10923, Artillery District of Honolulu Historic Site. It was pretty early morning and slow. I strung the shorter EFRW (12.5M) from a table to a tree in an inverted V. I chatted a while with another traveling ham, and I didn’t manage to complete my activation. I ran out of time, and packed up.
My last activation was on 2024-11-17, at US-6425, Diamond Head State Preserve, I setup at a picnic table near the hiking trail, US-10913, Diamond Head Summit State Trail. The whole park is in the caldera of the volcano. The EFHW stretched from table to a tree. The antenna wire disconnected from the transformer, but it was close, so it received OK, but trying to transmit showed a high SWR where the antenna would never usually. It was super-windy as the sun set early over the mountain surrounding me.
10 meter started opening today. With 5 watts, I got to Hawaii and Greenland.
I got in W1JMA’s log when they were activating US-7545. on 7047.5kHz. They looked me up in QRZ, so knew my name and location. I sent 599 and received 599. It was a super-minimal exchange, because I fumbled a lot.
I had to read a bit about how to correct errors, and I soon stumbled into AF3Z on 7036kHz, and I saw a funny series of attempted corrections: “a littr eee a littr eee a bit”
Later, I Got a second contact, KV4UD.
I used the EFHW for everything. I activated 4 park entities:
I setup camp at Marietta Riverfront Park with the EFHW stretched from the pavilion to the nearby tree. I was expecting to get rained out, but it never came.
I got 23 FT8 contacts on 20m and 3 SSB contacts on 40m and 20m at 10W. I also spoke to a nuclear ship in Baltimore, and I heard some light house special event stations. It was so quiet there at the park compared to my desk full of computers that I thought the NR was stuck on.
W3FIS, Dr. Paul Ross, stopped by to activate, so we chatted a while after nearly 25 years since I last saw him when I was in college.
Ben and I grabbed dinner and headed to the Columbia Riverfront Park to activate US-4567, Capt John Smith Trail.
Since there were more people around, I setup the simple GRA-1900T next to our picnic table instead of throwing wires. 20m was very busy, so I was getting a bit lost in all the traffic. I moved to 40m and re-tuned to rack up my more local contacts. As the sun set, our reach got better on 40m. Of course, I accidentally crossed 0000UTC again into the next day, so it was 2 activations: one (incomplete) with 5 QSOs, and the other with 14 QSOs. I operated all digital, since it got dark, and we were looking to pack up soon.
