Flight of the Bumblee Bees - 2004
It was an amazing Flight of the Bumblebees. Before noon I tuned around on 40, 30, 20 and 15 from home. I didn't hear a single signal! So I delayed leaving. I listened at 1:00. There were signals. Bees buzzing. Only on the QRP freqs. The rest was dead. Amazing. The tiny buzzing of bees was being heard across the country. I packed up and left almost immediately. I rode my bike into the Pemigewasset flood control area and reached the site around 2:00. I put up an 80 foot dipole fed with 300 ohm ribbon between two trees... a linden and an oak. The antenna was up about 30 feet. KD1JV's ATS2 and a ZM-2 tuner. Power from 8 AAs. I operated about 2 hours. and worked 12 stations. Congrats go to Chris N3XRV for pulling me out of the hive. He gave me a 229 but got the whole exchange! WA9TZE never heard me although I could copy him pretty well. I worked Carter N3AO twice. Once for the exchange and once later for fun. NK9G in WI was the best DX. I did fine to North Carolina. I had a blast! To think of those signals making it through deader than dead propagation. It's awesome. Here's the log. Thanks to all.
Looking North from my operating position
Date UTC Freq Call Mode My His Exchange ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 25 Jul-04 1830 14.06 W4ZV CW 339 559 NC 135 25 Jul-04 1840 14.06 WB4X CW 559 549 NC 218 25 Jul-04 1844 14.06 AA4XX CW 449 449 NC 120 25 Jul-04 1904 7.04 NK9G CW 559 559 WI 48 25 Jul-04 1914 7.0 W4ZV CW 559 559 NC 135 25 Jul-04 1917 7.04 N3AO CW 559 559 PA 133 25 Jul-04 1930 7.04 N3XRV CW 229 559 PA 5W 25 Jul-04 1944 7.04 N2CQ CW 559 559 NJ 86 25 Jul-04 1958 14.06 K1VP CW 559 559 NH 12 25 Jul-04 2012 7.04 K3ESE CW 559 559 MD 5W 25 Jul-04 2015 7.04 K1VP CW 339 559 NH 12 25 Jul-04 2034 7.04 W8VE CW 559 559 OH 5W