1st week PE45FREE - Quick NVIS wire

Quick wire in preparation

Not satisfied with the performance of my vertical on 40m I decided to take some wire and make a quick NVIS endfed. I threw out 20m copper electricity wire over the garden to a quick glasfiber mast of about 5m high. Fed with my antennatuner in the shack it did a reasonable job on 40m now. 110 SSB QSOs were made in one evening. Pile-up was constant. Unfortenately didn't have time to do it again. I was able to make QSOs mostly on 30m PSK/RTTY every evening. Have been trying 17m and 20m but even spotting myself didn't do the trick. Only 2 or 3 stations responded and I couldn't create a pile-up. I think those bands would be better at full daylight. But I don't have time to be on the radio then. I tried to participate in a  RTTY contest last weekend but made only 1 QSO. Bands were not busy at all here. Could be propagation? Anyway, I'm at 450 QSOs now and still having fun. I still hope for at least 1000 QSOs at the end of the PE45FREE activation.

Till now I worked PA45FREE, PC45FREE and PD45FREE with my own call. Hope to work at least 5 or work PA45FREEDOM this weekend to obtain 45 points for the Freedom award.

http://www.qrz.com/db/PA45FREEDOM

Haven't worked much bloggers yet? Were are you guys? Only PC4T is in the log as far as I know!
By the way, I still didn't make a eQSL account as all available time is spend to make QSOs. I will probabely make a PE45FREE account after the activation. So, be patient....

Intriguing QSL card

Nothing has intriguing me more then this QSL which was received last month. What is it? And why did I publish the card on the side? Well to answer the last question, look at the trees! To answer the first question the search begins. I found the QSL manager from PI4APD, PE2K Adriaan and send him a e-mail but he did only answer that it was not a antennatower or antenna but a artwork. What artwork, where? Then last week I remembered a trick I saw on the TV show Catfish. Search the internet with a sample photo. But even that proved to be very difficult. I must have seen around 500 photos before I found what I looked for. The artwork is called "Needle tower" and made by a artist called Kenneth Snelson. There are 2 versions of this freestanding tower made with tubes and wire. Needle tower 1 is standing in Washington DC, USA and needle tower 2 stands in Otterlo, Netherlands.





More info on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needle_Tower

I'm glad I found this finally as the QSL picture kept my mind busy. The designer of the card did a very good job as I'm certain I'm not the only one that wishes to know what it was.

Free fun on liberation day

Although the weather forecast was bad for today we had a beatiful sunny day till late in the afternoon. Temperature rising to 23,4C. We heard bad weather reports on the news in the rest of the country. We have been lucky and had a light thunderstorm with some rain for about a hour.

Liberation day is a day off from the job once in the 5 years for me. And today I would like to be a bit more active as PE45FREE. I was up early and found the bands not really open. Though, you never know what surprises are happening when calling CQ. I have been active on 40m and 20m today in LSB, USB, PSK63, PSK31 and SIM31. One of my first QSOs on 20m was surprisingly with AL7KC from Alaska, I think he was surpised as well to hear me. And although I was spotted on the cluster from the USA I hardly had any station calling after that. So I switched over to SIM31 and worked VK3AXF and VK6YM from Australia proving there was propagation and just no stations around. Late in the morning I started calling on 40m to give some european and especially dutch stations a chance. I had a pile-up but overall propagation was worse then expected. At least I spoke fellow blogger PC4T Paul, we had planned that and it luckely worked out. Although the "low" propagation I had a lot of fun and the surprises made me happy.

Till now I reached 209 QSOs, I have 791 to go to reach my goal. I will keep you all updated at least every week.