Old Mill Stream

Here be the collected summaries of my monthly activities on the air and in the ham shack. I keep a daily diary that I later transcribe into the soapbox notes seen here. Writing daily is an old habit acquired sometime in a previous century. This is a vanity project, nothing more than a record of my rado activities imprinted on the sands of time. "Old Mill Stream" is something of a twist on an old song. In days of yore radio men pounded the Morse code signals copied on the air on a special typewriter called a mill and the stream from this old mill still flows...

Despite being somewhat obsfucated behind the main site, there's always a chance someone might visit (you did!) so I thought I'd clean it up a little and make it presentable. If all goes according to Hoyle, new additions will appear on the first day of each month.

August 2025

This summer has been one of the most brutally hot and humid I can recall. Pure misery. And then during the last week of the month a cool front came along. Things turned comfortably cooler. It's almost too good to be true and I remain suspicious that Old Sol is going to burn us at least once more before the season officially ends. Autumn can't come fast enough for me. Bring on the pumpkin spiced lattes and golden leaves!

DX Chase - HF band conditions were mostly "meh" in August and that fanned the flames of the summer doldrums. There was, however, a noticeable uptick in activity on 10 and 12 meters late in the month. These bands have seemed dead for much of the summer and I had about decided work there wouldn't return until later in the year. I was wrong. One evening was an all you can eat smorgasbord of South American cuisine on 12 meters and enjoyed every bit of it. Nothing new there, I just enjoy exchanging fist-bumps with friends in SA. Feels like high school geography class all over again when I look up those worked. I still need Guyana (8R) to have worked the entire continent, but I haven't so much as even heard a station there. Fingers crossed that will change one of these days.

I managed to fill a handful of Challenge slots, plus I received confirmation for TO3K, Mayotte Island, an ATNO. So there was some small progress made in an otherwise dreadfully slow month.

Current DXCC Standing: 177/166

Sometime during the month the total number of QSO records I have uploaded to LoTW passed the 15,000 mark. This has resulted in just under 10,000 confirmed QSO records to date.

Just for fun - the last few evenings of the month I've been hanging out on 20 CW just tuning around. That process has yielded several enjoyable chats with DX stations. Brief. Not rushed. Casual. Nice. One of those was with Dave VP9/G4OSY vacationing on Bermuda. Such a pleasure. I need to seek more of these.

Failure to Communicate - I tried to snag the 3G1P (Ilotes Pajaros, SA-100) operation for a few days without success. I'm not into IOTA, but this one was especially unique and possibly never to be re-visited. It would have been nice to have it in the "bank" in case I ever do begin chasing islands. I understand landing on these rocks required operators to swim ashore, not a regular DXpedition occurrence. I heard them several times though they never heard me. The operation was cut a little short due to weather so that opportunity may have been lost forever...

Do you believe in magic? When I was a kid I had a six meter transceiver. We all did, it's how the locals stayed in touch. Probably like two meters today. But in those days commercial transceivers never included 50 MHz. We had to make do with lunch pail shaped single-band transceivers from Heath. But six meter AM and the neighbors television didn't play well together and television was on its way up while six meters was on the way out. For a season the six meter band with it's weird propagation was the sole domain of those few hams who chose to make it a primary focus.

Then about thirty years ago manufacturers began adding 50 MHz to their new all-band HF transceivers. Interest in the Magic Band was renewed. One characteristic of the band is that it's always dead. Until it isn't. You can listen for days or weeks without hearing a peep then suddenly one day, sometimes for only one hour, all hell breaks loose and the band is filled with activity. That's why they call it the 'Magic' band. These days the action on six is almost exclusively via FT8 and working billions of others on six became a new obsession. Mostly for those on top of the Honor Roll who have little left to chase and they look for new things to collect.

I'm not passionate about six meters. Never have been. Randomly I will drop down there and send a CQ or three. Usually never get a response and leave. But sometimes I do make a few contacts on six meters. I log those like all the others, but there is no special effort on my part to add to those totals. One of the measures of success on this band is the ARRL VUCC 50 MHz certificate. It requires confirmation from 100 unique maidenhead gridsquares. A few months ago I figired I'd check on my totals and saw that I was sitting at 90. If I qualified for the wallpaper I would apply for it. But there I sat at 90 for months. Then a few days ago the band did one of those magic openings and I was able to pick off a dozen contacts. Only one of them DX, and that was Cuba, but there were some new grid squares in the bunch. I became hopeful I might wrap up VUCC 50 MHz that night. But when the dust settled I was sitting at 98 which gives me some hope I will cross that threshold yet this year. I guess I do believe in magic!

73 de Jeff -30-