01/07/2009 | W1UJ I had a blast during SKN 2009. This was actually my second one. 2008 I had 1 QSO.

This year I fired up my grandmother's Yaesu FT-101EE that the original receipts show that she took delivery of this rig 2 days after my 2nd birthday, April 1976.

I remember WA1WPX used to have problems with the '101ee drifting around unless it was given enough time to warm up. I fired up the Yaesu with a variac of about 80 volts for a couple of hour and bumped it up to 120 V with 20min/20 volt bumps. Having read her elmer's notes on suggested tuning of the Yaesu, I began tuning, 100 strong driftless watts.

Then- The breaker blew! I have a shack attached to the back side of the garage. My 12'x12' radio room. The winters in New England require heat and with the 1500w heater and the Yaesu and some other stuff plugged into rack power strip seemed to pop the mains breaker. I went in, too cold and frustrating to continue!

I reset the breaker, killed the 1500watt heater to 600 and went to warm living room of the house! Hopefully someone is on tomorrow....

Thursday, 1530z I made my first QSO with Bob, KB8TL. The excitement is back! The heat on for the night had the temp pretty warm in the shack also. I continued for a half an hour on 40m with 3 QSOs. Went to thaw out in the house. Returned back to the shack shortly after 1700z and returned to 40 and called cq with no answers, nor could I find anyone. I went up to 20m and worked 5 stations in a little over an hour and went back to 40m to finish up shortly after 2300z

QSOs
40m; KB8TL K8WWJ N8GM --- N3IJR K2CJ W8KIX W3YR/4 K2HYD AF8C

20M; W4UCZ WB0KRI W7DFO K4TRH WB0TUA

I used my novice key snagged at a flea market of the times in 1988 at 14 years old. A J-37. It was a little rough for a few QSOs, but worked out. I was then looking around the shack and had a board with an old key and sounder, it looked like a school display. The display was given to me by my wife's Grandfather, an antique radio dealer. The key is actually a Navy flame proof, that was sweet to send with, I switched part way through and mis-identified it during SKN as a 'spark proof key' even once an 'explosion proof key' that wasn't easy to send using a straight and trying to spell at the same time- hi.

Thanks for the 14 QSOs- I joined SKCC and after this contest.

Happy New Year

Jay -- W1UJ