In fact, field strength meters won’t have measured much for the last two weeks.
Apart from being busy with what I call ‘civilian jobs’ (ham radio doesn’t pay the bills), premier show stopper is the WX. After a few days of so-so WX at best earlier this month, spring after WPX SSB has been very windy and rainy. And most of all: thunderish. The forecast has been announcing T-storms on and off for over ten days so I left my cables unplugged.
This weekend I wanted to work my share of SA-prefixes in the CQMM contest but there you go: T-storms announced and actually delivered. As I am typing this, another shower throws out cats and dogs and the occasional lightning bolt and the thunder roaring.
It drives me crazy: I can’t go outside and work in the garden or take the dog for a walk. And I can’t fire up the shack and make some contacts. Furthermore I’ve had it with sitting in front of my laptop! I have spent enough time inside looking at a computer screen. With the bad weather preventing me to do my garden work or filling my logbook, I finished checking the logs for UBA SSB last week. I also took the occasion (nothing better to do inside the house) to add some code that revealed some more silly stunts by sloppy participants. Belgians not knowing their own province, or their PC’s clock a few days off. I need to rewrite another piece of the code to calculate the points but I’m not in the mood right now. But all my work done over the past year has really minimized human intervention.
I hope tomorrow’s WX will be better so I can at least make a few contacts this weekend.