WSPR - 40m, 1 Watt, 16441 km

Distance wise, this is the 2nd best spot I've reported yet at 16441 km / 10216 mi, from ZS1LCD in Cape Town South Africa who was running 1 watt on 40m [7MHz]. ZS1OA remains king at 16511 km / 10259 mi on 30m [10MHz], and ZS3D is a regular in 3rd place at 16233 km / 10087 mi on 40m.

After running WSPR for about three months, I took a break from it about a week ago having built up a good feel for what I can expect with the current antenna configuration. Last night I had it running again after adding a 20 ft horizontal wire to the top of the 43 ft vertical turning it into a 1/4 wave inverted L on 80m.

With the exception of 60m, Remote ATU has no problem finding 1:1 match 80 thru 10m, 40m was the surprise since the antenna is close to a 1/2 wave. Hard to know with out an antenna analyzer to see what is really going on. I'll soon have a better idea, ordered a RigExpert AA-55 analyzer, and another 40 x 32 ft radials for the vertical / inverted L to bring the total to 60.

Extra Class

This past Saturday I made the trip to Renton where the Mike and Key club run VE testing sessions.

It took about 4 months of study and the practice exams on QRZ to reach an average score of 80%. To pass you need a score of 74%, out of 50 questions you can get 13 wrong.

The good news is I passed!

I think the incentive based system here is a good way to manage access to HF bands, in addition to creating an incentive to further your skill and knowledge, regardless of how "irrelevant" some think the subject matter and questions are.