Category Archives: Misc

Busy weekend – contest and hamfest

Contacts, Contests, Misc

This was a busy weekend. Starting Saturday at 8am ET, the IARU HF contest started. Bands were very noisy but during the day/evening on Sat and for 30 mins on Sun morning I made 111 contacts. Countries outside of the US (though I got Hawaii again) were: Brazil, Cayman Islands, Canada, Argentina, Netherlands, Italy, Slovenia, Serbia, Ecuador, Brazil, Costa Rica, Austria, Czech Republic, Madeira Islands, Cape Verde, Canary Islands, Trinidad & Tobago, St Pierre & Miquelon, Aruba & Columbia. There were some very large pileups to cut through and my 100 watts, it was persistence vs pure power that paid off.

After making a couple contacts on Sunday morning I set off for the Sussex County hamfest. It is the largest hamfest I’ve been to so far. Took a while to just walk around. It had the usual assortment of crap that I can’t believe people would even look at let alone buy, but there was a lot of really interesting stuff to check out. One fellow had a Kenwood MC-60 desk mic I’ve been looking at picking up which he said was used twice but it looked a bit more used then that though it had the original box and instructions. He wanted $100 for it which is the same as or a bit more then you’d pay on eBay so I walked away.

I also saw the Midland 13-898B CB base station I had when I turned 13 yrs old and another vendor had the Turner Plus Three microphone I used with it. The vendor with the CB said I could take it for $5 but I wasn’t interested in bringing home something I didn’t need even it it was $5.

Saw lots of BARA club members and some other folks I also know.  Spent about 2.5 hours there and took off to head home and process the log from the contest.

About K2DSL

Misc

My name is David and my call is K2DSL. Here’s a brief intro of who I am.

With the Internet, there isn’t too much privacy so there’s not much and can say about myself you couldn’t find on your own with some poking. I live in Waldwick, NJ and I’m married with 2 teenage daughters. I’m in the IT field and have been been so my whole career.

I have always been interested in radio having a CB when I turned 13 and scanners throughout my life. In the summer of 2007 I decided to go get my ham radio license. I took the tech test in August and passed with 100%. The call sign I was issued was KC2SAU and I immediately applied for K2DSL. In Oct 2007 I took the General test and passed. There’s a big difference in privileges and very worth the studying.

After passing the General, I applied for being a VE. As a General, you can only grade Tech tests in a VE session.

I just started to study the material for the Extra test. There’s a few reasons I’m going for Extra. The first is that as a VE, I would be able to grade all classes and not just Tech. The second reason is once you’re on HF, seeing the stations on the frequencies you don’t yet have privileges for makes you nuts :-)

That’s a quick overview and I’ll add additional posts about my equipment, my club, my experiences and whatever else comes to mind. I have other sites at http://www.levinecentral.com which you can also check out.

73,
K2DSL