Blogroll maintenance!

 Short notice. I removed a few blogs from the blogroll that were not updated for over a year. Some of them are SK, others just stopped writing or are at other (social media) platforms.

I removed blogs from the following Hamradio callsigns:

W0EA, KA9EAK, N4KC, M0SPN/OH3SPN, VK3YE, PA7MDJ, W5KV, M0WGF, KQ2RP, G0MGX, SV5DKL, VK2PN, ON5MF, G7VJR, DL4MFM, PH7GIS, AG1LE, G7MRV and SJ2W.

Is it unfortunate? Well, I don't know. All things come to an end. Blogging about HAMradio was a "hot" thing years ago. There are so many possebilities to contact others and write about your adventures on the internet. You just have to pick one the suit you best. For me it is still this blog.

Who needs a dedicated 160m antenna anyway?

  Neighbour station PA4O Peter was active in the CQWW 160m CW contest from Luxemburg last weekend. Of course Peter asked a few times if I was able to work him there.  I told him that I would do my best. Normally my dedicated 160m band sloper antenna is down for summer. After my yearly tree cutting session I install it again. So, that's what I did last weekend. But unfortunately the sloper didn't work as advertized. Probabely a loose or interrupted wire up in the tower. And of course it was raining, no option to do maintenance on any antennasystem. The only option that was left is trying to use one of my antennas for 160m anyway. I tried the inverted-V doublet in the past but knew it was very ineffective on transmit. The multiband halo could be tuned to 1:1,5 but I immidiatly noticed it did not receive as well as the..... 10m band LFA antenna. The 10m LFA could be tuned very well actually and receive on 160m was pretty good. A quick search on the internet on how this is possible didn't give me any results. Am I the first one trying this? Everyone will tell that this is impossible and the system probabely has so much loss that working stations is very difficult anyway. But I can tell you that I worked with 100W CW about 50 stations with S&P. I even made it to VO1AC in Canada. And of course I was 599 at LX/PA4O in Luxemburg. Who needs a dedicated 160m antenna anyway?

Well, just kidding of course ;-)

TBDXC no more.

   I just received an e-mail from Pete MM0TWX that the True Blue DX Club has ended. Including the nice TBDXC marathon that is. You can find more info as long as it is online on the website: https://www.tbdxc.net/

Pete came to the conclusion that amateurradio without using FT8 isn't possible for most HAMs. Only a few die hards are DXing with SSB/CW only. But it is just less as anticipated. It was a noble thought I think, but you can't fight the change in this hobby. It is how we DX these days....

I've never been a member but I really liked the marathon. I use whatever mode I'm able to use to DX. But I always prefer SSB. Unfortunately these days that is not always possible.