2nd CW Contact

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Made my 2nd ever CW contact tonight as part of the SKCC's January K3Y event. I've found that using the K3UK Sked Page to figure out who is on the air from SKCC at any given time, and the Reverse Beacon site for the 40m band makes it super easy to locate CW signals on the 40m band, in real-time, that I'll be likely to copy. 

Greeley, CO to Buffalo Grove, IL

 above map courtesy of "As The Crow Flies" Distance Calculator

Date/Time: 7 Jan 2016 / 0118 UTC

Dist: Approx 877 miles. 

Freq: 7.052MHz 

Rig: KD1JV Tri-Bander

Pwr < 5w

Ant. 40m Wire Dipole

K3Y and the K3UK Sked Page

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Despite having achieved my first QSO on December 30th, I was disappointed that I was unable to make contact with my QRP rig during the 24 hour ARRL Straight Key Night. Luckily, there is another Morse code event happening throughout the month of January 2016, which is the SKCC K3Y event.

While reading about this event, I learned about a page that I think I will be using every time I turn on the radio within sight of an internet-connected computer, which is the K3UK Sked Page, where folks from all of the CW groups are letting others know what they are monitoring on the radio spectrum, and what frequencies they're transmitting on. This will be a huge help in setting up skeds outside of contest times.  

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