March for Babies & Florida QSO Party MCARA

Martin County

Amateur Radio Association

Hams assist in March for Babies & participate in Florida QSO Party

The past weekend was very busy and fun. I hope you participated in some of the activities. Saturday started with the March of Dimes March for Babies in Stuart. Here is a link to the March for Babies Photo Album We had eight hams out to help with the event. Fortunately, the worst call was to get assistance for two walkers that could not finish the course. It went well and was a good practice event.

At noon, we got off to a slow start in the Florida QSO Party. Murphy struck the computer logging system and the computers could not talk to each other. Many, many thanks to Bill, N4BKT, for getting the computers to talk to each other again. We had a good group of watchers but not too many wanted to operate. I understand. It is pretty scary until you have listened for a while. The first few hours are especially frantic as the contacts roll in pretty fast.

Paul, K1PT, and Tom, K4MM, were there the whole time. I was able to be there for 16 of the 20 hours operating time. We ended the contest with just over 1250 contacts and 650,000 points.We worked 49 states, missing only Alaska. We probably worked 40 countries. Now I will need an extra heap of patience to wait nearly a year to see the results. A huge thank you goes to Paul and Pidge Tibbetts for allowing us to take over their home for the weekend. They were extremely gracious hosts.

Things slow down for a while now. But, don’t be afraid to get on the air. There have been some very good band openings recently. You never know what you might hear. Talk to you on the air.

Doug W4DAS