Painting to Propagation - A Colorful Weekend

Woke up to fresh snow this morning! 

I knew my weekend time for radio would be very limited. I'm still busy doing some projects at home and the paint brush and roller kept me focused on the big picture. I did however play a bit or radio. Bands still seem a bit rough these days. I had a bit of insomnia on Saturday morning and enjoyed a few European RTTY QSO's on 15 meters shortly after 1130z! My 100 watts was making it over the pond. I had spotted a European station on 15 meters and I received a twitter request from Marc, DO4DXA to try a RTTY QSO. Marc needed Alaska on 15 meters. Once I set up and was on frequency, I printed Marc with no problem! Marc and I made our contact and after Marc spotted me, a few others fell in behind him. 15 QSO's later, I headed back to bed for a few more hours of rest.

This past weekend was SKCC's Weekend Sprintathon (WES) I fired up the rig and straight key for a handful of contacts, balancing calling CQ and doing a bit of search & pounce. I found Sunday propagation to be extremely challenging so needless to say, I put much more paint on the walls of our living room than I put QSO's in my logbook. The highlight for me during the WES was being called by TF3DX who was mobile in Iceland! Villi had a great mobile signal into Alaska on 15 meters. I've operated from Iceland before and I love that country! I'm looking forward to a return trip someday. Seems I have this attraction to arctic environments. 

We woke up this morning to a fresh coating of snow. The weather has been pretty nice with some temperatures pushing 50 degrees this past weekend. Seeing snow this morning was a bit depressing as I'm hoping most of the winters accumulation melts from our yard in the next two weeks. We have lots of mud and water laying atop the ground at the moment so hopefully things will dry up soon. It's nice having nearly 24 hours of daylight right now. 

One of my recent Twitter posts