I just got back from the shack and had an interesting walk down the
hill. Not that going up was all that un interesting!! Still I was
pretty excite to see some bobcat tracks that followed my tracks up the
hill for about half the distance. The tracks started at the bottom of
the hill coming on to the trail just inside the woods line, and they
went along right in my tracks that I made when I walked up at about 6
PM. The tracks were very fresh. The snow had stopped sometime after 8 PM
local time, so I assume that the bobcat came sashaying along right
around then. It was interesting that the tracks were right on top of my
tracks almost all the time. By the look of the spacing, it was a big
bobcat, maybe 24-28" long. When I got home I looked up the track type
and it was obvious that it was not a dog, coyote, or a red fox. It
resembled a cat print but was way too big for a regular cat. I found a
few spots where a pair of deer had been walking as well. Those tracks
were full of snow, unlike the bobcat tracks.
My new 12 volt computer is running very well in the cold. It comes on
and works fine. The room temp started at 24 degrees. It was 68 degrees
when I left to walk home a bit after 9 PM. I checked the 222 beacons at
23:30 UT, when I got things turned on. K2DLL was very weak and watery
from FN23, and W3CCX in FN20 on 222.060 was pretty weak as well, and
only peaking at 10 dB max. In warmer wx it hits 30 dB on the panadaptor
quite often. So things seemed bleak. I saw some bad news on the ON4KST
chat page that Good Buddy Ron WZ1V was all iced up and had high VSWR.
He did not get on for the evening. Neither did Pete, K1PXE. If GB Ron
was iced up, I'll bet Pete had icing as well. I checked and had 21 QSOs
by about 0200 UT. Trying to recall all by memory is hard but here is my
list:
K1ZK SSB FN34 Good copy on SSB.
W1AUV CW FN32
WA1RKS CW FN32
K1FSY SSB FN31 Much QSB
W1AIM SSB FN34
W9KXI SSB FN12 Much QSB at times
WA3NUF SSB FN20 Much QSB
KC3BVL SSB FN20 Ditto
WA1MBA SSB FN51
WA1NLG FT8 FN41
K1RZ FT8 FM19 Very loud from FM19 up to about +19
N1GLT SSB FN42
K2AEP SSB FN32 his beam stuck South.
N2JMH FT8 FN13
K3SK EME Q65 FM07 -20
VE6TA EME Q65 Alberta.
N2OA FT8 FN03 pretty gud sigs.
W2BYP FT8 FN13 Very loud at +27
WA3EOQ CW FM09
K1FMS SSB FN32
I forgot somebody on the list. I also heard AA2SD but could not
complete on SSB. The QSB did not help at all. I heard him twice and
then lost him in the QSB. I heard another station in FN20 around the
same time, but could never get his call on SSB either. It was quite
frustrating. Also heard was W6TCP in California via the Moon route.
A few observations from my end of the paths to the SW. The storm was
winding through and it was snowing fairly hard here at first. All the
signals had severe QSB. K1FSY went down to almost the noise level at one
point. WA3NUF, who is never weak, managed to drop down so much on SSB at
one point that it was difficult to copy Phil on SSB. This is just about
unheard of in my experience. Then later on, I tried with Howard WA3EOQ
at a much greater distance, and we completed easily on CW. So what gives
with the WA3EOQ path. It is a much longer path and seems to suffer less
from deep fades. I listened after my QSO and K1FMS also worked WA3EOQ.
There was a QSB peak here and Fred also got the same peak at his place
140 miles away! That stuff always gets me to thinking.
The walk down the hill was much colder and windier than my walk up
earlier. With all the snow, it was rather slippery. I went slowly. It
was great to get back to a warm house!
73
Dave K1WHS
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