QST de N7GMT

So this weekend was the ARRL Sweepstakes for SSB. Yes, terribly exciting, I know. I wasn’t sure I was going to have time to operate at all, because Saturday was looking really booked, what with The Holy Cow finishing up, and sneaking off to Salt Lake to pick up a new sofa I’d ordered to surprise my Sweetie with.

Anyway, with the two youngest under the weather, I had to stay home from church to watch ‘em. No radio time there. You wouldn’t believe how much trouble two little boys can get into if left to their own devices. (Well actually, I know of several of you who can, but that ruins the flow of the previous sentence, so let it slide, will ya?) And if you’re the only adult in the house, who do you think they come to when they want attention? Yeah, hard to guess that one, isn’t it.

After everyone else got home, had lunch and had settled into what I like to refer to as the Sunday Afternoon Fester I figured I could warm up the radio and see how many Qs I could pull off before someone noticed. I didn’t start until about one o’clock Sunday afternoon, and the contest was due to finish by eight that evening, local time. I was puttering along when I got a gentle prod from my DX-ing buddy, N7BAN; a text message “I heer u” [sic] and a response of “38″ when I asked how many Qs he had. Twice what I had at the time; time to kick it into gear … at least for a while.

I didn’t plan on getting in as many hours as I did, and probably would have knocked off early, but I got a special treat. My son, who has been kind-of interested in getting his license for some time, came over and sat down, watching me rack up a few points. I explained sections and multipliers, and we watched the score go cross 2,000 and continue to over 3,000. By then the excitement was building; he’s just a wee bit competitive. By the time I was over 5,000 points I could tell he was itching, so I had him share the headphones, handed him the mike, and showed him all the things he needed to say to complete an exchange. We got interrupted by dinner (bah, who needs food when there are Qs to be won?), and after dinner I set us up with a pair of head-phones each. That really got him going and helped us coordinate.
For those of you out there who slowed down, took special note, and gave precedence to a young voice answering to my call, Thank You! You really made his night, and mine. Seeing the light in his eyes as we “scored” an Alaska, or Hawaii, or Virginia station was worth it all to me. The last Q we had right before the contest went dark was with K7IR, up in Eastern Washington. Since the pressure was now off, we had a chance to have a quick chat. Turns out he has a son the same age, and complimented mine on doing a fine job with the exchange. Actually, several of you gave him compliments on his operating that brought out that goofy, snaggle-toothed grin of a young man caught between childhood and the age of teens. (Precious radio funds will soon have to be devoted to adjusting the worst of the snaggles. <sigh>)

To the 87 ops with whom I exchanged today, TNX es 73.

To those who gave special note to a gangly youth (and future ham radio op), VY TNX es 88 de N7GMT.

Two notable happenings, in my hammy world:

KB7QJC finally upgraded to a General Class license. His boys — and the rest of us, for that matter — have been after him for a rather long time, but the Morse code requirement was something he didn’t care to have to deal with. Now that it’s out of the way, he has upgraded. HF privileges! Wah-HOO!

The other gent who has earned my congratulations is currently KE7OVY, but will soon likely be K7BAN; he is the father of my buddy KE7JSM … who is also planning on changing his callsign, and has requested N7BAN. (Isn’t that cute? Father and son with matching callsigns. ) The thing that makes this so cool for me, is that ‘OVY — an old military radio copyist(?) — can copy CW like nobody’s business, even after … well, “many, many” years of letting his skills languish on the shelf. He unconsciously infected ‘JSM at an early age with a desire to get into radio, and now his son and I are feeding off each other’s enthusiasm. Besides, it’s neat to see someone else join the hobby, ’cause I know how much fun it can be.

So a hearty congratulations, guys!

(And ‘OVY-cum-’BAN-sr., we expect you to be upgrading to at least General soon, too; you already have the code down pat, and will have so much fun bumming around the world wirelessly!)

<singing (poorly)> “And we’ll have fun, fun, fun, till daddy takes the paddles awaaay …”

KE7JSM called me up tonight and wanted to know if I was up for a little code practice. “Sure,” says I and we toodled off to 144.080 MHz, our usual local-CW watering hole.

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Well, we atoned for our day out, Friday; we schlepped the kids up to Swiss Days, and convinced my sister-in-law and her husband that they, too, wanted to experience Swiss Days. With a herd of kids.

I got to get my leather-bound book; we got to eat more <ahem> “Swiss” food; and the kids got to spend their September allowance on bags of marbles at the hand-made games booth (I don’t think any of them had the cash in their hands longer than twenty seconds, some literally two seconds—from my hand to theirs, to the booth-keeper’s). No one died; there were no kids lost in the making of the expedition (although two crashed and fell asleep towards the end); and some of the kids learned to bus surf on the way back to the parking lot.

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