Field Day 2019 is in the books, and this was my most active Field Day in several years.
Since my PC power supply change — and the disappearance of the switching power supply hash from 80 and 40 meters — I could actually operate at Studio B in our library and hear stations just fine.
I started out on 40 meters Saturday afternoon, and tuned up and down the band hunting for QSOs. I was running my Heil Classic mic set to the narrow element, which is what I use 99 percent of the time anyway (its just punchier with my voice). I don’t have a PTT switch, but ran VOX, and it worked just fine.
The Yaesu FTDX-3000 did a great job on both transmit and receive. I worked everyone I could copy, though the QSB was problematic. A station running 10 over S9 could drop into the noise level and then slowly build back.
I didn’t spend more than 45 minutes at a time on the air, I had other things to do though my wife was attending a continuing education course all day long.
I ran in several periods on the air until my wife got home, then the TV reigned supreme. Once she and my son were in bed, I continued my contesting on 40 before switching to 75 meters. We were having a lot of thunderstorms in the area, which made band conditions pretty miserable at times.
But overall, it was blast. It was great to hear the tentative nervousness of newcomers makiing their first contest.
EBAY NEWS. I received today several eBay items I recently purchased. The first is something I had never seen — a stereo headset from the David Clark Co. This headset is in near minit condition. But it isn’t the same light green color as the DC headsets; the stereo headset is light gray.
The headset came with the original box and all the literature from when it was purchased in about 1963. I tried it out earlier today and on my Yaesu FTDX-3000, it sounds fantastic.
I also received a couple of Canon camera lenses I bought on eBay last week.
A couple of weeks ago, I had a full cup of coffee in a decanter that won’t leak in my Pelican-knock off gear case. Well, the damn coffee cup knocked around and the whole mess of coffee ended up soaking my camera bag and laptop bag.
Fortunately, coffee did no damage to my Dell XPS 13 laptop; I wasn’t so lucky with my Canon DSLR digital camera and lenses. Coffee got in on both my zoom lenses and gummed up the works. One lens is 18-55 mm, the other was 75-300 mm lens. Luckily, the lenses are pretty common and cheap to find. I bought newer versions of both lenses for $100. Both lenses arrived today, and they both work just great. I also decided to upgrade one of my camera bodies.
I’ve been using Canon XSi bodies for half a dozen years. I moved up a generation or so and bought a used Canon T1i camera body. It appears that the XSi camera body is going to function OK again, so I’ll return it to duty shooting photos here at home. I’ll put the X1i to work professionally.
And above all, I will make damn sure my coffee cup lid is sealed tight before it goes into my case.
73 es CUL de KY4Z … SK