What a great way to round out the week - with a full house!!! My good friend Amy, KB1NXO came down today. You hopefully don't have to talk with Amy any time soon since among her many duties up here in Sales and Marketing is management of the SK column!! hihi

Anyway, we set Amy down at the beginners station where she started to tune around and listen. Amy participated in the W1AW Open House a year ago and actually ran a bit of a pile-up! But being that she has a VERY active 10 year old super sports star at home, she doesn't have a lot of spare time to get on the air - so she's been looking forward to these lunch-n-learn sessions. Chuck, K0BOG was on hand and was explaining about Technician privileges while she listened. Just then - Diane, KB1OKV and Sue, KB1OKW walked in!!! Our award winning graphic artists - wooohoooo!! A full house again today!

So while Amy, Chuck and Diane discuss all the bands, the differences between HF and VHF - at the HF station, Sean and Sue were talking about the interesting way to contact people using CW. He went over to 30m and found a couple OMs talking with each other (it's like music!).

I think the energy and excitment coming out of W1HQ spurred Mike Gruber, W1MG out of the lab and into W1HQ...although he did walk in with an empty coffee cup saying "I hear you guys have free coffee in here!"....sorry Mike, not today! So he decided to just take in all the hammin' going on....glad we got that comfy chair and ottoman in the corner!!

Just like the other days, before we knew it lunchtime was over for all of us! But everyone wants to come back for more!! All in all, I'd say our first week of mentoring was great! It was fun, informative and an easy-going, nonstressful environment!

Have a great weekend and 73 from W1HQ!!!

Well, today was rather uneventful. As it happens, everyone got busy, had other plans, are coming tomorrow...etc etc etc. Thankfully, Steve Ewald, WV1X stopped in to visit - Steve works in MVP taking care of our 71 Section Managers. Steve just celebrated his 25th anniversary here at ARRL not too long ago!

Anyhoo....I decided to bag out and hit Starbucks for a coffee. When I got back, I was told to find Sean, KX9X. I figured - oh goodie, someone came for the 12:30 lunch! Nope - there was a station from Israel on calling DX for North America - WOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! He turned everything off after he, Chuck, Hugh and Tony all made the QSO with 4Z5LA....so while I waited for the amplifier to warm up, I got pretty excited! Yippee - another DX! I think i'm up to 6 now for my DXCC - not too shabby a start!!!

Stay tuned for more. We've actually got some folks coming in this weekend for the ARRL DX Contest. Usually we fire up W1AW, but we decided to continue our mentoring mode and get our operators some DX experience! So we're pretty psyched about that! Oh yeah, the conference room will be smelling like pizza soon!!!!

73 for now!

I don't think we've ever had a line of hams waiting to get on a rig before at W1HQ....today was a lot of fun! When I arrived at W1HQ at 11:58am, I thought i'd be the first one there, but Sean KX9X and Ed, W1FRI were already in there...Sean had pizza - yup, it's definitely a ham shack!!!!

Ok, first victim to arrive. Ahem, i mean first ham - Dave, N1NAS. Dave got his ticket in 1992 and upgraded last year. He hasn't been very active yet, but now is thinking about checking more activites out. His dad is a ham, and that's where his first interest began. So Dave today was interested in learning to tune around the band, learning to hear call signs and finding out where people are. He came across a couple of lunchtime nets - so he and Sean talked while tuning around.

Then Jodi arrived. Who btw, I totally botched her callsign in our brown-bag lunch last week - so I hereby officially apologize to you Jodi, KA1JPA!!!! Jodi was part of the class last year and is a General. She's been coming in to W1HQ longer than I have and used to pop in on the weekends, tune around and grab some QSOs. She has a fake Ficus tree in her office with her QSL cards on it - it's way cool (see pic below).

Anyhoo - Jodi played around a bit on the HF rig and then all of a sudden, booming out from Dave's area is someone calling CQ40. Nice and loud - and it's KA2ZNI in Knox, PA. Dave wasn't quite ready to chew the rag, so Sean answered his CQ as W1HQ and told him what we were doing up here with our mentoring in the club station. After that, I hopped on as I needed PA for my WAS.

Before we knew it, 1pm arrived and it was time to head back to our desks! As they say, time flies when you're having fun. I called Chuck to let him know the HF rig was available, so he came in and took over for his lunch break.

Another fun lunch-n-learn at W1HQ. Stay tuned for more!

73 de W1KRB

Wow - I love starting the day with good news - or at least positive notes. I got a great note from Hugh who was in W1HQ yesterday for the mentoring (while I watched the clock tick at the doctor's office.....sigh). Anyway, Sean did take a pic, but it's kinda blurry....if it's awful and everyone starts complaining...i'll remove it! So Hugh, KB1NFI is part of the web team extraordinaire.

So today's training....who is coming today? Well, I know Dave, N1NAS will be there. He was in the General Upgrade Class with me last year - WOW - I just realized - it was a year ago that we all passed our General!! Woot! Oh, and Hugh - he upgraded this time last year - but we didn't know he was studying on his own. He walked down from the conference room at W1AW for the test session last year and was a General! He then proceeded to jump right into the RTTY contest. We have a video on youtube about that (just search youtube.com for videos by KatieW1KRB)

Anyhoo - Dave is the Senior Technical Illustrator here - so all those drawings and designs you see in QST and our pubs - that's Dave's handiwork.

Ok, I'll stop rambling now and get moving!

Stayed tuned to hear about today's session. In the meantime, here's what Hugh had to say:

"Sean did an excellent job of mentoring yesterday, plus Dennis Dura, Ed Hare, and Dan Henderson also stopped by, and we got into a fairly technical discussion on DXing and propagation while Dan was there. Sean and Ed discussed adding a 6M station in there. Ed had just brought in a new antenna. Plus the station may be operable for digital modes within a week!

I feel pretty comfortable now on the Basic Station and Sean also gave me a quick overview on the advanced station.

He even tuned in a music station to have something to listen to while we were going over things, and it turned out to be Radio Gabon! Pretty good music too.

I'm really impressed by how much work has gone into getting W1HQ operable again. It's night and day compared to how things looked there a couple of years back."