Another week of amateur radio has expired. Expired Ham, get it? 🙂
Welcome to another issue of Expired Ham, a weekly newsletter where I discuss the ways I participated in the amateur radio hobby this week.
There was no radio activities for me last week. We either had high winds which prevented me from putting up my antenna at home or snow and freezing rain which killed my desire to operate during the Winter Field Day exercise. Bummer.
I shared a tip related to quieting down a Vibroplex Iambic Standard mid-week in case you missed it. I wish I had implemented that “fix” a long time ago. I don’t know what it is about Vibroplex keys, but they are just noisy and mediocre quality in my opinion. They are not my brand of choice. I’ll leave it at that.
As can probably be said by many across the country, the massive amounts of snowfall that were forecasted amounted to lots of disappointment for anyone wishing for lots of snow. That’s the case here where we were initially forecasted to receive greater than two feet of snow over the weekend. We ended up with maybe six inches topped with another inch or two of freezing rain. Massive disappointment.
If it hadn’t been so windy, I would have put up the antenna and worked the Winter Field Day exercise. The Vienna Wireless Society, the ham club I’m a member of, had to canceled their plans for an operating station due to the weather. This is somewhat ironic given the nature of Winter Field Day, but safety is of highest concern so the club canceled the event and encouraged members to operate from home or do their own thing. I had volunteered to run the station for a couple of hours on Saturday. Oh well.
Did you get on the air for Winter Field Day? How did you do? Let me know in the comments and stay warm everyone.
73,
Matthew, K2MAS
K2MAS.net 