Long time no blog. Long time no QSO. Long time bad WX. I’ve been QRT for over two weeks now. I was on a roll with nice DX and the antenna works on schedule. Then the weather changed and I had to lower the tower. Next thing was the weather getting worse and I even took down the swinging wires. My hope was to set up and test last weekend in the LZ DX contest. Always fun the week before CQ WW. But the WX was VERY bad. Strong continuous wind with severe gusts on top. And the occasional thunder and lightning. It has been like that for almost 10 days now with more strong winds, almost stormy weather even. So here I find myself, the day before CQ WW CW. The rain is pouring down and the wind is still a major show stopper to put up wires. The predicted winds for tomorrow are even stronger. So there is no way I want to crank up the tower. That’s one, and maybe the only one, drawback of my low profile field day setup. It’s just not sane or safe to crank up an unguyed telescopic tower and load it with about 100m of wire. I’ve seen it swinging once with 5Bft winds, and now it’s even 6Bft.
Today the news reports that November 2009 has been the month with the strongest average wind since they started measuring in 1879. No shit? I follow the long term predictions on a German WX site (ON4CT’s hint) and I must say that even 10 days in advance, they generally are spot on. So I had seen it coming. With the isobars so close to each other right over Belgium… No CQ WW CW for me this year. You won’t catch me using a sports metaphor very often but here’s one for you. I feel like Tommeke Boonen not going to the Tour De France (parallel here). Only, I can’t blame myself or anyone else but the WX. On Monday I had enough information about the weather forecast for this weekend to call off my contest plans. So for the first time I decided to join a serious M/x effort. But where do you go from here? DR1A maybe? I don’t really know anyone there, or at least not very well. But I remembered that Fab DJ1YFK was going there this weekend. He’s a regular at the WWYC chat so I talked to him and –lucky me!– he told me he had to bail out and that his seat was open. After some hesitation I sent a mail to the DR1A ‘chief operator’ and right away I got the answer that they were already overbooked for the weekend. Unlucky me! The PJ2-feeling jumped up on me again. Remember that? Oh well… Today it hit me: the guys at OT2A might be doing a M/x again after their CQ WW SSB effort. I called ON4IA but for various reasons they had to cancel for this weekend too. It just doesn’t work out.
And then there is one of Europe’s biggest M/M stations only 90km away from here that will be sitting idle for another 4 months until it’s CB mode time again. I wanted to title this entry ‘There just is no contest culture in Belgium’. Or just a plain ‘Fuck you’. But I guess you can’t help it either.
I have been VERY busy working on a project lately. Very intense work. Something that suddenly popped up. The intensity even got disapproved by the XYL who told me that I spent too much time on the laptop last weekend. She is very right. I stopped reading blogs or emails, every minute is spent on the project. I spend my lunch breaks writing things and taking notes on pieces of paper. I’m not talking about it publicly for now. It has to do with ham radio, but it’s not a personal project. Well, it is ‘my’ project but not to keep for myself. There is a chance that it’ll never get out and I don’t want to burn myself on this. Neither do I want it to exploded in my face. Very cryptic no? Time will tell what turns the project takes…