[Hammarlund] Join Sunday Halli Net And Catch A Wave

[Duane Fischer, W8DBF]

Catch a wave? Sorry to my friends "The Beachboys", a great tune, no offense
intended. More like catch a net full of pull tabs! Before long there will be
more pull tabs on the shores of our streams, rivers, lakes and oceans then
grains of sand!

Nevertheless, take a break, work will wait, life is too short as it is, so
enjoy it before you become fertilizer! Join us tomorrow, Sunday October 11th
for the HHI 20 meter Net. Wave adios to those weekend jobs and tune in some
radio waves for a change.

The Pre-Net commences at 12:45 PM EST/EDT, or 1645 UTC. So drift on in if
you are mobile, on short time - or a short leash - and let the glow go
before the actual Net begins.

The official Halligan's Hallicrafters International 20 meter Net starts at
1:15 PM EST/EDT, or 1715 UTC. No fan noise, solar flares or stirring
instrumental interlude, just an occassional soft strain of Frogzilla's
favorite tune - "I'm In Love With A Big Blue Phrog" by Peter, Paul and Mary.

The frequency is still 14.293 MHZ usb +/- for key clicks, mike splatter and
somebody, somewhere, calling CQ for a special event, no event whatsoever,
'can you copy me good buddy?, why is this here rig flashing red and yeller
lights on the SWR thing like some "TILT!" thing at the arcade? Plus the guy
who just put up a new antenna, says you are booming in, but asks you to
repeat his signal report five times and never does ge it, or your call sign,
right! Ya gotta love it! Never a dull minute!

Remember to listen for the Net from 14.292 through 14.293 MHZ! Depending on
the phase of the Moon, high - low - no tide, acidity level of local rainfall
and operator mood of the moment, we adjust the actual HHI operating
frequency to compensate for adjacent goings on!

Last Sunday while trying to do the HHI Net, while trying to not get
obliterated by those 10Kw stations in California, who were doing their QSO
Party thing, and the two European DX'ers who were calling CQ to CA only, I
heard a very frustrated young lady operating from MW3 landwho was being
totally ignored. Since I could not hear anyone trying to check into the HHI
Net at that moment, I tried to make contact.

She was somewhere in England, speaking English with a British flavor to it
and was totally unintelligible. She had the modulation cranked to some point
past 100% and was screaming into the mike. Her voice was on the high side to
start with, so the signal had plenty of audio punch. I spent two minutes
trying to tune her in, as I thought the blind wonder, that is I, had once
again accidentally touched some multiple function button on this old Icom TX
and activated some function! Not this time!

I finally got her attention, told her to turn her mike gain down, as her
audio was very distorted. I had to explain that "distorted" meant I could
not understand anything that she was saying. After numerous exchanges, she
finally caught my across the pond drift, turned off the compression - which
she had maxed out, the mike gain to "normal", got the desk mike set to the
correct impedence and backed her lips away from the mike so she stopped
kissing it, she was intelligible!  After devoting at least five minutes to
this poor confused lady with enough audio to deflect an inbound asteroid
with a ground zero of Big Ben's main spring key hole, the band went dead!
Sometimes propagation sucks like a forty year old Hoover with a new drive
belt!

Have you guys been listening around? The old blind dude still does NOT have
the primary HF amp operational - can not find anybody left alive in this
area who knows how to tune one! Nevertheless, I have managed to work
Georgia )former Russian state), Armenia, Sint Maarten, Namibia, Nigeria,
Turkey, Asiatic Russia, Canadian province Nunavut and several others. Some
new, others previously worked once. I even, are you sitting down? - if not,
please park rump before reading on!, worked two new stations in Norway! For
reasons known only to postal officials, whatever god is currently ruling
Jupiter and blind Hams who read crystal balls with tactile feedback I can
not get any Ham in Norway to verify our QSO. Now before some of you loose
lip slang slinging non-fans of mine hurl harsh words my way, take a stool
softener, an anti-acid tablet or ingest some Peptoll Bizmaul. You need not
wish me bad luck, I seem to be quite gifted at creating my own! (yes I know
I spelled some words wrong, have to do that to avoid having mail trashed by
the spam sniffers out there!) Do American Hams 'really' waste money on
airmail postage + green stamps for return postage + a few bucks for reply
bribes sending Hams they never worked QSL cards and actually expect one in
return? Believe it or not newcomers to our fabulous hobby, some of us
actually keep hand written, typed or software generated logs for our
contacts! This is why some guy in a country you did not know was even on a
world map, can not spell with the help of a software powered spell checker
or the head library reference fact finder's assistance or locate with that
famous Booggle search engine calls you by name during your less than 15
second QSO when the DX is hotter then the finals in your amp after those ten
minute 'minimum' AM exchanges! He has a computer powered up, connected to a
high speed connection, logged into 'qrz.com' or whatever, and knows more
about you in seconds then you know after knowing yourself your entire life!
He who lies, dies quick, in this computer age!

One contact I made with a Ham in Norway got no reply. I probably bought his
lunch, bless him. Another send my QSL back and wrote on it with a pink
crayon "Not In Log". Odd, as I had written down bits of information during
said QSO that I could not have gotten if we had not had a contact. Another
told me by e-mail that he was 96 and had not even turned the rig on in eight
years. Then I had to wait four long years before I heard another Ham in
Norway! I even got so desperate that I started doing that thing I hate: CQ
Hams in Norway only, or six land only, you have heard them. Never got a
reply from Norway.

Then all of a sudden I started to hear stations in Norway! I worked three of
them in two weeks. I even asked the last one, LA3 ... if he would verify our
contact by QSL? He said he verified 100%. We shall see!

I also have worked and verified some countries such as Iceland, Djibouti,
Ethiopia and Tajikistan. So there is DX out there people! You just have to
be there when the band suddenly decides to open up a crack and take a listen
as to who is trying to call them! Sometimes, and this I do not fully
understand so one of you who does please feel free to enlighten myself, as
well as others, it is as if the band flow is unidirectional! I can hear a
station in Greece calling and his signal here is 5/9+20 with terrific audio.
I can not make contact no matter what I do. When I made the contact with
Namibia, I had tried every thirty seconds for forty-five minutes with no
success. I finally shut everything off, fixed myself some lunch and tried to
relax. Then I got this insane urge to go try to contact the station again!
Totally stupid, besides I was too tired to care at that point. But off I
went, crawling on all fours into the Ham Shack. Pulled myself up into the
operating chair, flipped all the switches etc. Sure enough, the station was
still on the air and booming in here. Twenty-five minutes had gone by since
I had staggered out of this room!

I made two tries and got through on the second one! He did verify, by the
way! Oddly enough, my QSL with five green stamps in it never arrived in
Namibia. I sent a second card eight weeks after the first one failed to
arrive, this one arrived in eighteen days. It had NO money, AKA green
stamps, in it! The Ham there had told me to not send any additional money.

I had the same gave up, came back, made contact experience two weeks back
with the country of Armenia! However, other times no matter what one does,
nothing works.

I even made contact with a station in Bolivia. One does not hear a Ham there
too often, at least not in Michigan. I had my beam eighteen degrees east of
due north. He had his beam pointed north toward the USA from Bolivia. Hence,
I was working him around the world, long path, and coming in his back door!
He was working me coming in the back door of my beam! My RST? How about a 3
by 4! Hey! I got a QSL, so who cares about the numbers, heh? The worst, or
perhaps more correctly, the lowest, signal report ever for a contact that
verified! Maybe the lowest ever for any contact! I have all the contacts
logged, but truthfully, I am too lazy to read all sixty thousand+ of them to
find out!

I mention most of this as an encouragement to new Hams or new to DX Hams as
sometimes it can be way past frustrating! Propagation is the Great
equalizer! It matters not what your equipment is, be it humble or awesome,
when the band is not open, it is not open! Since I am running a third of the
power I used to run for Net or DX operations, it does make being NCS much
more difficult. I would gladly pay one of you to come down my chimney and
get this AL-82a tuned up and operational! It would really help me,
especially on Sunday!

The guys on 14.295 MHZ came up to 14.2925 last Sunday and complained about
me covering them up in LA! Me with my Mosley TA-33 and 400 watts PEP
covering up their legal limit++ stations with beams twice what I have and
much higher. Hmmm. Hey! We have been doing the Hallicrafters Sunday 20 meter
Net since what, 1997? I know the first two NCS were in Canada, VE7DEN and
VE4WI. I took over when VE4WI, Craig Wincher, had to leave due to the death
of his mother and personal health issues. Craig was a super guy! I sure do
miss him. So I have been the default NCS since March 15, 1999. The Vintage
SSB Net has been operating since, when? At least 1995, possibly longer. They
were on 14.293 first.

Now the guys on 14.295 started their Net after I took over the Halli Net, so
it was after March of 1999. They were within 3 KHz of us, but refused to
move or even compromise. I personally offered to move down 500 cycles if
they would move up 500. I was told no way. I know that Andy WB0SNF tried to
get them to compromise also, possibly K5LYN or Al, W8UT also.

Then the Spanish speaking group moved in on us about three or four years ago
when they started using 14.292 MHZ. However, I had a discussion with a Ham
who seemed to represent the group that was on Sundays. He was very
cooperative and we worked out a deal. They would give us 14.292 MHZ for the
Halli Net and the Vintage SSB group on Sundays and were glad to do it. For
the most part, Amateur Radio operators are the most willing to work with
other members of the Ham community then the members of any other group, club
or organization I have belonged to or were associated with.

So do not become discouraged because of the poor propagation! The space
weather people are not saying that this solar cycle has broken all the
normal rules and is running about fifteen years instead of eleven years. It
is slowly improving! A week ago I worked two stations in Australia on
Saturday on twenty meters at 1915 UTC. They had signals of 5/9+30!
Incredible! I had worked, and verified, only one station in Australia for
the past four years. Then two with huge signals in a single day!

There are reports of awesome DX on forty meters too.  Especially early in
the mornings, about 5:00-8:00 AM EST/EDT and also about sunset and beyond. I
have even heard sporadic reports of activity on 6 meters, 10 meters and 17
meters. So go listen! Seek and ye shall find stations!

Here is hoping to hear some of you later today, since it is now Sunday!

Duane Fischer, W8DBF - WPE8CXO
E-Mail: dfischer at usol.com
Hallicrafters web site: www.w9wze.net
HHRP web site: hhrp.w9wze.net