FYBO 2007 - Home in the Cold

The week before FYBO the XYL and I went into the mountains near Moscow, ID to check out the snow. That Saturday was very nice with sun and temps in the mid 30's. Snow pack was fine. I even gave the KX1 a brief work out. Things were looking good for February 3.

By Thursday the weather forecast for Saturday did not look so good. By Friday night it called for wind, snow, lows in the 10's, and highs in the 20's. Geoff, my FYBO operating partner, and I decided to operate from under my back deck. We would have low temps for the good multiplier and have the advantage of going into the house to warm up periodically.

We were on the air by 1430Z with a 40 m QSO with N9NE in WI. For the first three hours, Geoff operated 40 m using his call of KC7QCS and I kept a watch on 20 m waiting for it to open. He did let me sneak in and make a few 40 m contacts. During that time we had temps of 22 to 25 and a nice view of my snow covered back yard.

After the second warming session and with one of my K2s not liking those temperatures, we moved all the equipment indoors. Geoff still stayed on 40 m and I began running on 20 m. All the QSOs were fun. Some noteable ones who had temps below 20F were N1QS, VA3RKM, N0EVH, W9JVW, WB8LZG, W0ANM, and AF9J. The most noteable one was W0IS with a -7F! Brrr! I worked AK, KL9GN, at 2306 Z on 20 m and JR0BAQ, Kohei, at 2238Z on 20 m.

The band breakdown for K7TQ was 12 Qs with 6 SPCs on 40, 64 Qs with 29 SPCs on 20, and 2 Qs with 2 SPCs on 15 m. I got NQ7RP, well he called me, for the bonus.

The band breakdown for KC7QCS was 4 Qs and 4 SPCs on 40m.

We both had a good time.