Hi All,
A quick note of appreciation to those of you that participated and dropped into our Zoom call (which kept those of us that were contesting spurred along nicely thank you) over the past couple of days.
We had participants and visitors from Ontario, Alberta, Texas, California, North Carolina, Tennessee and Pennsylvania. One intrepid Ontarian bundled up and worked off his back deck with his KX3 in the -8C and 70% humidity weather (brrrrr) while the other had firmware issues 🙁 with his KX3 and then discovered a bad PL259. One Californian tested out his IC-705. Our friend from North Carolina was hooting and hollering at his large run of over 100 QSOs in under an hour on 40m voice last evening. The Texan had fun with a quick run in CQ. The four Okotokians were hampered by very challenging conditions with customary high noise conditions, and we all dealt with low SFI and A indicators and, sadly, no sunspots throughout the contest.
We worked a whole lot of single-operator at home (1 Hotel) class stations and, for me, a surprising number of Outdoor stations in cold climates. While you almost expect to hear of the guy in Texas or Arizona on their deck in January, you don’t usually expect it in Ontario or Minnesota!
Fun was had by all, even if we did let out the occasional bad word in frustration during a momentary challenge placed in front of us. Like the guy in RI who was only working stations by the number “any number twos? ok now number three…” as if he were rare DX, hmph, half an hour later he was working sixes. [I’m over it already – and I got my RI multiplier elsewhere!]
We are all eager to see the final score total when results are released. For those of you who have completed your logging and already told us you’ve submitted to the group – thank you. If you have not yet submitted your log, please do not forget to enter the Club Name exactly as VE6FAR Cycle25 in your logging software, and to verify it is there before you submit it.