New Year’s Day weekend was pretty busy down at the museum:
- Friday: I did a bunch of housekeeping. I logged in our recently-received QSL cards and replenished our brochure supply.
- Saturday: Quentin, KD8IPF, and I figured out how to use the SSTV feature of Ham Radio Deluxe. This was surprisingly confusing. We expected to find SSTV as one of the items in the drop-down menu of the DM780 program, along with PSK, Olivia, and the other digital modes. Instead, to receive SSTV, you have to click on a separate menu item.
Quentin and I didn’t make any SSTV contacts as band conditions were really poor, but we did receive a couple of pictures. Next, we have to set up a couple of our own templates and then actually make a contact. - Sunday: Jim, K8ELR, and I were there, ostensibly to operate Kid’s Day. Unfortunately, there weren’t very many people at the museum, nor could we find any other stations on the air working this event. So, we ended up not making any Kid’s Day QSOs.
On Saturday, January 9, Les, W8LDS, and I met for breakfast before heading over to the museum. There, we met Jim, K8ELR. After turning on the rig, we heard Tom, K5IRH, Shreveport, LA calling CQ on 40m CW and quickly established our first contact. When we mentioned that we were at a local science museum, he quickly told us about Sci-Port, a science museum there in Shreveport. I told him that every science museum should have a ham radio station and have e-mailed him information on our operations.
Emboldened by our success with SSTV the previous week, Jim and I decided to give RTTY a whack. Fortunately, there was an RTTY contest last weekend–the Mongolian RTTY DX Contest, no less! Again, band conditions weren’t the best on 20m, but we managed one contact apiece. Mine was with P4OYL in Aruba, Jim’s with EA5FL in Spain.
After that, we decided to pad our QSO statistics a bit, so made a bunch of CW contacts in the North American QSO Party. That was kind of like shooting fish in a barrel, so we quit pretty quickly and wrapped up ops at about 1:30 pm.