It’s been a slow summer for DX though last night I did snag TO3K on 20 meters. Mayotte Island (AF-027) is number 109 on the Club Log Most Wanted list and an ATNO for me. Mayotte is located in the northern part of the Mozambique Channel in the western Indian Ocean off the coast of Southeastern Africa, between the northwestern part of the island of Madagascar and northeastern Mozambique on the continent.
The current DX operation began on August 2nd and is scheduled to run until August 10th. The Italian operators include, IV3JVJ Luca - IK3ZAQ Ivan - IZ3NYS Alessandro who are using IC-7300’s on 80 thru 6 meters.
Over the Rainbow
One is never afraid of the unknown; one is only afraid of the known coming to an end…
In the sleepy town of Saratoga Springs there’s an old amateur radio club that’s been around since 1931. Officially, 43 members are still on the books, but during the most recent Field Day operation, only six members showed up. A good time was had as usual, but the decline in active membership never passes without notice, comment, and considerable hand-wringing that one day it will all be over. Two of the more active members, Bob and Tom, had been friends for nearly 50 years. They continued to meet for breakfast every Saturday morning when there isn’t a nearby hamfest. Almost a dozen club members used to frequent the ‘Hand and Fork’ restaurant each week for this unique coffee klatch, but that number had dropped in recent times to just two.
Lois, the long-time waitress had already poured a cup of coffee and was headed in his direction as Tom walked through the front door. Taking the cup he said, “thanks Lois, you doing okay?” then took a seat across from Bob in their usual booth.
“Doing just fine, just a couple more weeks until I’ll be moving to Ann Arbor to be close to my grandchildren,” she said with a noticeable twinkle in her eye.
“We’re going to miss you around here when you go, what’s it been, thirty-years?”
“At least that,” she replied. “You guys want the usual this morning?”
They did. A full order of biscuits and gravy with a side of hash-browns and an eternal pot of hot coffee. Being diner coffee it was a given it would be strong.
“You worked anything interesting since last week?”
“Just that TY5 in Benin on 30 CW, you already snagged him, right?”
“Yeah he’s worked, but not yet confirmed. Band conditions have been kinda wonky lately. It’s probably just the summer doldrums, but the peak of Cycle 25 was so good maybe we just got spoiled by the easy conditions?” Tom speculated.
These two enjoyed a long-running debate about the future of amateur radio. Both were convinced that it was a 20th century relic that would one day run out of steam, but then, the same could be said of them. How the end would come was the only debate between them. Tom believed the growing authoritarian government would close the service and reclaim all the radio spectrum for itself. Bob’s theory was that overall numbers would simply continue to decline, and without growth, or even maintenance of the status quo, ham radio would go the way of the dinosaurs.
Both men wished more members would attend these weekly brain storming sessions because frankly, both had grown tired of each other’s talking points in this debate and they hoped some new blood could be injected in this long running conversation. But having finished breakfast, and multiple coffee refills, it was obvious no one else would be joining them today.
“I’ve always said I like your prediction for the end better than mine,” Tom said as they were waiting for the check. “It would be an interesting twist if the numbers dropped so low that all the commercial vendors gave up on this market. Then the only hams still on the air would be those who could home-brew equipment from scratch or maintain the old gear forever. Either way, it would be a lot more like the pioneering days of the hobby and wouldn’t that be something to behold?”
“It’s certainly something to think about,” Bob said.
As they walked toward the parking lot both already knew they would indeed be thinking about it, and discussing it, for the rest of their lives…
Alien Implant
August is like the Sunday of summer…
A colonoscopy this week, my first after 66 trips around the sun, set me back a couple of days. You always hear how terrible that procedure is, and it’s not much fun, but I’ve spent twenty-five grand to have even less fun. The prep work just takes up a lot of time. I should be able to bill Medicare too since I did most of the work at home. The medical staff were friendly and professional. More on that in a minute. The actual procedure was an IV insertion before wheeling me to the operating room where I remember talking to someone for about 60 seconds. Then, lights out. Next I recall waking up in the recovery room. No pain. No regrets. No colon cancer. Thank God. The only bad news was I had twelve polyps and they removed seven. I get to have a second colonoscopy at some future date to be determined. No problem.
Thanks to life in this modern era, the medical personnel had unlimited and unfettered access to me. I must have received a hundred text messages and made to create online accounts for several medical portals all with “new” messages waiting for me to read. I received at least twenty reminders for the procedure and twenty more as the cutoff for eating solid foods approached. That made me more anxious about the procedure as I was getting a real time countdown for two weeks for something I had been dreading. I assume our wonderful, technical, digital future will eventually include AI countdowns for our death: “Don’t forget, you will die in 168 hours. Tell someone you love them”. “96 hours until you drop dead, eat something good”. “You are scheduled to die tomorrow, are you ready?”
Ahhh, the miracles of modern life. But seriously, get a colonoscopy. It’s painless and the prep work isn’t nearly as awful as you might imagine. If you have avoided it for years, like me, you will end up kicking yourself once it’s over and you realize how simple and painless it actually was.
So there I am, wearing nothing but a hospital gown and lying on a bed with wheels. Two nurses are with me, one asking me a lot of questions, the other putting an IV in my right arm. Trust me, small talk is a handy tool in a situation like that and in just a few minutes we were all laughing and cutting up over some silly thing or another. I had been asked, by multiple people, a long list of questions about things like any meds I was allergic to, or if I had family members who had colon cancer. One question, “do you use a soap that will make hospital tape not stick?” threw me for a loop. How would I possibly know that?
But then I was asked, for about the 4th time, do you have any metal objects in your body. A little exasperated at answering “no” yet another time, I went full wise-guy and said, “not unless I have some alien implant I don’t know about”.
And boys I gotta tell you, the air suddenly got serious. Very serious. Deadly serious. The nurses looked at each other and then at me and wanted to know more. It was actually difficult to make them understand I was just kidding. But it was too late. The convivial moments we enjoyed just seconds earlier was over and they were suddenly all business. It was as though I had touched a raw nerve and I wanted to ask them if they had seen patients with alien implants but the moment had passed and I’ll be damned if I don’t now believe something must be going on in the medical community that few are willing to talk about…
Cool Breeze
I’m in a really good place right now. Not emotionally or spiritually. Just on the couch with my old dog…
The cold front rolled in here last night. Thank you Canada for sharing! Woke this morning to 56F and immediately opened the windows in the shack to drink it in. Some might think it’s too chilly in here right now, but I love it. Forecast for today and tomorrow is sunshine with a high temp of 75F. A glorious foretaste of the Autumn weather that can’t possibly arrive soon enough for me.
Received a small cluster of LoTW confirmations this morning. I guess some folks really do wait to upload once a month as I see an uptick in results on the first day of most months. In the batch this morning was confirmation of a contact I made with Georgia a few weeks ago. No, not the Peach State, the country. There were others, but that was the only ATNO. I also got one more confirmation for a needed grid on 50 MHz so the slow march toward VUCC on six meters keeps rolling along.
I’ve been hanging out on 40 CW this morning hunting POTA activators while sipping coffee. The band seems short to me, but five in the bag so far and I think I’ll stop at six for the day. I’m up to 908 unique parks worked and I intend to retire from chasing POTA when I reach a thousand parks so I’m that much closer to ending this quest.
The North American QSO Party (CW) takes place this weekend and I might dip a toe in those waters if for no other reason than to run up my CW numbers for 2025.
Maybe I’ll see you down the log this weekend?
DX and Coffee
Two Aussies and a Japanese guy walk into a bar…
Or so it seemed when I worked VK2LAW, VK6DW, and JE2GEG right out of the chute this morning. I knew the band was long when I first fired off a few CQ’s on 20 meters and received multiple RBN results from VK and ZL receivers, a good sign for DX to the South Pacific.
None of these were new entities, but I never turn down an opportunity to work any station in those regions. Australia seems so far away and exotic in my mind that I’m compelled to call whenever I hear a VK. Same goes for Japan where there’s actually an award for working all prefectures there and I’d like to one day hang that paper on the wall:
Japan consists of 47 administrative units below their national government. These entities, called prefectures, are roughly analogous to states in the United States. The Japan Amateur Radio League (JARL) sponsors the Worked All Japan Prefectures Award (WAJA) for making contact with at least one Ham Radio operator in each of these prefectures.
I need to do a little bookkeeping to see where I stand in that particular quest. I haven’t checked recently. Yes, there’s an app for that. Whose surprised? Work ‘em all and do the paperwork later has always been my method…
Six Meters
Blessed is the DX that reciprocates via LoTW without renumeration…
I have tried to get into the habit of checking on 6 meters on a daily basis during E-season. There have been nice surprises though VUCC isn’t a passion for me. My total confirmed, unique grids on 6 meters is currently sitting at 90. It was 65 before this season began. My lack of productivity is mostly due to the highly directional propagation I’ve observed. Very often when working on the Magic Band I will contact a half dozen or more stations from the same grid square. Just a few days ago I checked in about my lunch time and there was a buzz of activity. I worked ten stations in very short order, every single one of them in EL29 (Houston, Texas) and one in Mexico. So add ten contacts to the log and get credit for a single new grid, EL06 in Mexico.
Working ten to earn one makes the effort a little longer game and given this season is quickly slipping away, it could be next year before I nail down VUCC on 50 MHz. I was hoping to get there this year, but I’m not complaining. I don’t have a cloud of stacked aluminum over my head. I’m working from the trenches and my expectations are low from the get-go and I’m not going to get above my raising.
Happy Friday
I started the coffee brewing before entering the shack this morning. Opening the laptop and firing up the transceiver, along with flipping on the ceiling fan, were among the first activities of this Friday for me. I checked LoTW to see if there were any updates. I always check it first thing. I guess it’s like keeping an eye on the mailbox waiting for new QSL cards to arrive. There were a few confirmations, one from the TY5AD operation in Benin that I worked a few days ago. Not a new country, but a new band slot on 20 meters. Opening MacLoggerDX to download those confirmations I was alerted that a new version of the software was available for download and now v6.57 of MLDX is installed.
Called CQ a few times on 20 mostly to check propagation. No replies. Not great. SSN:137 SFI:156 A:15 K:2. With the coffee done brewing I settled in with a cup and began listening to the Treasure Coasters SSB net on 7153. Next was tuning around 20 meters where I stopped to listen to W6ABM/VY2 operating phone from Prince Edward Island. He was generating enough buzz that he was directing traffic by call regions. When I tuned across he was calling “fives” so it was a long wait for “nines” by which time he had faded into the noise.
Scanning headlines I saw the Alabama QSO Party takes place this weekend. When the year began I told myself (because no one else listens) that I was going to work more QSO Parties this year. That hasn’t happened and I think I figured out why. Being retired, I hit the shack daily from Monday thru Friday then usually take a break from radio over the weekend. And of course weekends are when all the contests, sprints, and QP’s take place. I can’t believe it took me so long to figure that out…
This evening we will likely walk over to Morrow Meadow for the Farmer’s Market. Pending the weather. And sweat. Hot, sticky, and pop-up thunderstorms are in the forecast for nearly the next week. I’m at a loss as to why so many people look forward to summer time. It’s a puzzler.
Remote Receivers
Fred: I heard you check into the Possum Trot Net on 40 meters this morning. Didn’t know you hung out there. Odd thing, I could copy you fine, you’re practically local. But I couldn’t hear anyone else on the net. Propagation must be pretty poor today? How many folks regularly show up?
Tom: We had about thirty check-ins this morning. But you won’t have much luck copying everyone directly. We’re spread out over about 2000 miles.
Fred: Really? 2000 miles is pretty impressive for 40 meters phone at 9am. What’s this about not being able to hear everyone directly?
Tom: We all use remote receivers. You log onto a Web page that lists a bunch of remote receivers that can be streamed over the internet. We all are connected via a net logger application that let’s us make a list of check-ins so everyone knows whose next. For instance, when it gets turned over to Sylvia in Chattanooga we all switch to a remote receiver in southern Tennessee to listen to her transmission. After her we might switch to Dale in Phoenix and listen via a receiver in Arizona, and so on. The system works really well so long as you have a solid net connection. Band conditions don’t really matter much for us.
Fred: Seems to me it might be easier with that large a crowd that you would all move to GoTo Meeting or something like that. You could even see each other using video that way!
Tom: Whoa! Hold on there Fred, that doesn’t sound like a suggestion fit for a “real ham”. We want to communicate using our radios, not the internet. You start doing that and next thing you know, ham radio is dead and everyone will be talking to each other online using computers. We’re real hams, we use our radios and the ionosphere to communicate!
Fred: Uhhh, yeah…but… Never mind. See you down the net logger…
ARRL Board Notes
Perusing the ARRL Member Bulletin covering results from the Second Board Meeting, (July 18 –19, 2025) turned up a couple items of note:
For instance, I had plum forgot about the new DXCC Trident award that was announced months ago. Best I can tell this one copied the Triple Play WAS award format except with DXCC instead of States. Confirm a 100 DXCC entities worked using CW, Phone, and Digital modes and get the award, which also includes endorsements for increasing numbers of DXCC. The intent is to generate additional CW and SSB activity and this seems like a good idea.
The Board also approved a year-long celebration of the semiquincentennial of the United States. This will include commemorative ARRL US250 Worked All States awards from contacts made during 2026, as well as other on-air activity. Jeez, now I feel really old as I remember well the bi-centennial in 1976…
The Board approved making 2026 the Year of the Club and passed other motions in support of the initiative including:
- Creation of a book featuring high-performance clubs.
- Establishment of working with and recognizing outstanding club websites while helping clubs with ineffective websites.
- Recognizing ARRL Affiliated Clubs that maintain a higher-than-required ARRL membership level for affiliation. Clubs that achieve a 70% or a 90% ARRL membership level within their clubs will receive acknowledgment and special recognition.
Can I root for the success of this initiative while remaining highly skeptical of the basic premise?
My observation has been that local clubs, of every variety, have gone the way of the landline telephone. I don’t think it’s a ham radio or ARRL “problem” I simply don’t believe people in 21st century have the same interest in social clubs as humans had a century ago. Locally, the Lions Club, the Rotary Club, the Optimist Club, etc. all closed shop years ago. When asked “why?” the answer was that younger people simply weren’t interested in the concept of “clubs” anymore and the current members were all in their 80s and tired. Sounds a little too familiar, eh?
But hey, I give the ARRL credit, not for trying (again) to revive local radio clubs, but for doing what members have been begging them to do in this regard. The members are wrong and I don’t think it will work, but the effort means HQ does listen, even when tossing good money after bad. Besides, there’s always the possibility that I’m wrong and this works. Drop me a note when you re-install that rotary dial landline phone in your home and we can discuss it…
Bureau Cards
