On The Air:
With no out-of-town work trips this week, I had more time to be on the air, and my log looks better than it has for the past couple of weeks! I'm continuing to participate in a lot of local and statewide nets, so that constitutes a notable percentage of my logs this week. A few DX stations were logged, as well as a number of states.
Top 5 Distances This Week:
CT7AEQ - Portugal - 4415 miles
ZZ80CW - Brazil - 3935 miles
CU1EZ - Azores - 3634 miles
NM1JY - New Hampshire - 1255 miles
N7ERU - Arizona - 1251 miles
International Contacts:
Azores, Brazil, Portugal
States Worked:
Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Georgia, Indiana, Maryland, Missouri, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Texas, Wisconsin
Bands Worked this Week:
2 meters - 6 contacts
10 meters - 3 contacts
15 meters - 2 contacts
17 meters - 2 contacts
20 meters - 5 contacts
40 meters - 11 contacts
80 meters - 5 contacts
Around the Station:
This week parts of Mississippi fell under the influence of a complex weather pattern that produced about two days' worth of adverse winter weather. Total snow & ice accumulation at K5JAW was one-half inch, but that's more than enough to cause havoc for drivers who are more accustomed to the South's more balmy weather. I worked from home for two days, but was still able to accomplish everything that I would have gotten done at the office. Being professionally involved in the public health aspect of emergency management, I was expected to monitor and report changing situations and conditions to our administrative personnel so they could make daily determinations on agency operations. In addition to that, we supply ongoing situational awareness to licensed healthcare facilities, so they can adjust their operations so they can mitigate any impacts they may experience.
At one point, I had two laptops running. One was connected to our work network so I could have email and file server access. The second was connected to my personal email, through which I communicate similar weather & situational conditions to a host of friends and family. Also, it was serving as a live connection to our local National Weather Service office, using a system that allows us to interact directly with the forecasters to report and gain information. Finally, I had an open chat going with other co-workers around the state, through which we were able to communicate a volume of data rather quickly. In addition to all of that, there were radios monitoring our statewide networks, our local county fire system, and our local amateur 2-meter repeaters.
At some point in the midst of the winter storm, I recalled being an exercise controller/evaluator for a multi-state hurricane exercise in 1995. I recalled that in one of the many planning meetings leading up to the exercise, one of the objectives was to "test email as a means of rapidly communicating from forward disaster areas." Remember, in 1995 the fastest and most accurate means of relaying printed information was via FAX. We were just learning how this new world of email worked!
How far we have come in some 20 years! From "testing email" to having two computers up, connected to multiple pathways to share information to both fixed stations and mobile telephones. Wonder where we'll be 20 years from now?
But what makes it all fun for me is knowing that I can go from that, to talking to someone in another part of the world with little more than a wire and less energy than an average light bulb uses! Key up, talk on!
QSL Cards Received this week
WQ4S - Florida
AJ4YV - North Carolina
QSL Cards Going Out in the coming week
No cards this week, I'm waiting on some new QSL cards to be delivered. I'll catch up as soon as I get them!
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