Alaska

76 degrees, some rain, could spring really be here? Goldfinches recently appeared at the bird feeders.

Hey, an incredible thank you to WL7WH, Bob in Anchorage, for a fine business QSO this week...my first Alaska contact. I was tuning the bands for SKCC contacts, and just by chance heard Bob calling CQ on 30 meters. We had fine copy throughout, with a little QSB toward the end. Certainly an important contact for my log. Now I just have Hawaii and Rhode Island left for WAS. I guess it's kind of ironic that one state is next door and the other half way around the world. 'Just goes to show that so many factors go into making the contact beyond propagation....like time zones, work schedules, and density of radio operators.

I enjoyed the recent ARRL website article by James Kocsis, WA9PYH entitled "On Ham's Bucket List". I sincerely hope to have have a lot of time to achieve my own bucket list. The article did get me to thinking about "short term" radio goals for the rest of 2011. Here's my list:

-Attic Yagi for 10, 15, 20m from the ARRL Antenna Compendium

-Complete 40m vertical with elevated radials

-Make an AO-51 contact using my FT-60 handheld

-Get digital modes up and running

-ARRL 20 wpm qualifying run, 25 wpm by end of year!

Now that I've put these into print....let's see how I fare for the next 8 months. Finally, I planted a seed for a future QSL card. More about that later this summer.