11/15/2009 | KC4HW This picture was inspired by Arnie/W4EIP (was W2DTJ). Arnie worked a Clean Sweep many years ago! He has helped me with encouragement on CW and listening to me babble on about Ham Radio for years! He is celebrating 60 years in Ham Radio this December! What a great hobby.

I have been playing in SS, PH only, for several years and had come up one mult short several times, close but no cigar! Missed different ones each time. One year it was NE, another was WV, and then ND... so it went, it was frustrating to say the least.

Five year ago, I changed job and moved, so NO real serious efforts in SS for a while. I have been trying to get my CW up to speed. Many may attest to my poor skill over the last 4 or 5 years in the AQP, GQP and FQP. Not much better yet, but I keep working on it. Have been working on my station in South Alabama and it was just this year that I really felt that I had enough station to try a serious effort in SS again. So I set goals to make a "Clean Sweep" and working 650 Qs! This might help the Alabama Contest Group in their quest for a gavel in club competition. May not seem like much to some, but pretty lofty goals for me.

So, I started on time Saturday on 15m and got PAC and AK plus a large group of W6s and W7s right away. I moved to 20m for a short time and had 33 mults going into the fourth hour. Moved to 80m around 0000z and by the time 0330z rolled around I was out of gas--been a long several weeks traveling and working! Had 235 Qs and 70 mults. I would like to have had more Qs in the 6.5 hours, but heck this is as good as it get for me on CW.

An early start the next morning at 1111z met with good results on 40m and by 1600z I was at 428 Qs and 75 mults. Then started hopping around to find the remaining mults. Only made 1 mult in the next two hours. Sat at 76 mults for a long time. Then at 1937z I worked the VE8 with real bad aurora! Turned out that that was the only VE8 that I could find or work. So was very thankful to work them. Then at 2209 worked NE. At 2249z worked SC, now I needed VE4 (MB) for the sweep. I could not find the VE4 and had seen on cluster an announcement that VE4EAR was travelling the 40m band, so I decided to find a clear spot and just called CQ and hope that he would find me. I was perpared to "stay until the cows came home". Fortunately at 2258z VE4EAR called me in a little pileup that I had going on. Really I just caught the 4EA when he called and I said to myself (probably outloud) "it has to be VE4EAR", so I took the chance and plugged VE4EAR in the log and sent a report. When he returned with my report I got so excited that I could not help myself and began to tell him that he had given me my first SWEEP ever! I went on for over a minute! He congratulated and wished me GL. Funny thing was that I guess that the other folks that were calling hung around through all my going on and I had several calling again. I was so excited that it took me a minute to get myself settled down so that I could work another station. hi

Make goals and try for them! Have fun along the way. Some say they can't compete, heck I am only competing with myself! This time I won with my first "Clean Sweep". Next time I might not. "You win some, you lose some", some days just get rained out, but the Sun was shining for me after SS CW.

Thanks to everyone that gave me a contact! Roll Tide! -- KC4HW