maandag 28 januari 2013

Not in the mood

Weeks are passing very quickly and I still have no free time.    I may hope that this week is really the very last busy qrl week.   Since the CQWW CW contest, all time went to qrl, always qrl, qrl, qrl...

And it is true, with temperatures far below 0°C and a thick layer of snow in the garden, there is no pleasure to install the 80m vertical for the contest. 
This weekend, the UBA SSB contest couldn't take my interest.  I had no good feeling with SSB. 
On Saturday, qrl... on Sunday I started on 20m, had a nice pile-up because it seemed that the HT-multiplier was difficult to find.  Then I went to 15m.  Some nice QSO's with JA en VK/ZL.

After 230 Q's I stopped, completely demotivated.  I had problems to log what was said.  YL in stead of LY, RU/RN/RA, everything sounded the same way.
This is the first time in 15 years of contesting that this occured.    Maybe a virus is attacking my body and a disease will shortly appear.
In the afternoon I found the fun to play CW on 18 Mhz.  This went much better.

The OJ0V kick-off meeting took place last week.  Much work to do, many things to clear out, but the team spirit looks good.   I'll order the small Steppir vertical to play with on OJ0V. 
This is also a good opportunity to have a backup-antenna in case my 3 element Steppir (or one of the 12 control cables) fails.  During contest, it can be an aid to have an omnidirectional vertical on all bands.

My yearly DXCC update - sent to the ARRL by the new digital platform about 2 months ago - is still ongoing.  Why does this take so much time ?

In the mean time I still have problems with my PS0T contacts.  I worked them two times, on two different days, but still no QSL in LOTW.
I ordered a paper QSL via paypal, but still no qsl.
Nevertheless, my two QSO's appear in clublog.  Very strange situation...

Let the spring begin !  I need some solar energy !