Back in the swing of things

It generally takes a day or so after a long drive to get back into things but I wound up with a boatload of things to do yesterday as I had spent a weekend out of town.

So I did a bunch of things yesterday but I was really off of my usual game which sucked. Some of the things I wound up doing were frustrating. I drove a 50 mile round trip for nothing, for example.

Last night Kitty and I sacked out and I good a pretty good night's sleep so I'm good to go today.

Yesterday a  friend dropped off a radio for me to try out. It's an IC-7200 and I have wanted to try one out for some time. I'll try DXing with it as that is my focus these days. 

Last time I was home for a couple of weeks I sent out over 80 QSL requests and when I got home there were about 15 of them, mostly DX. Yesterday I got an envelope from 'The Bureau' and there were 5 cards in the envelope, mostly from September, 2012. Most of them requested QSL which means I had to send out  4 QSL cards. 

I could have cheaped out and sent them via the bureau but sent them out in the mail as making them wait another several months just isn't right. On the other hand, they sent their cards to me via the bureau.

I have been chipping away at things and it is time to pick up my list and see how many more I need to get 100 and therefore my DXCC award. I think I am 125+ logged and 75 confirmed on paper.

While looking through I swore I had missed checking off one or two so I maybe closer than I think.

I have 5 from the Middle East logged but not one has confirmed. One from Saudi would have but his QSL manager returned my card and said I wasn't on his log.

That happens sometimes especially in pile ups when the poor slob is trying to keep up with things. He likely missed a letter. When his DX manager ran my call through it wasn't there and I suppose he wasn't going to dig through hundreds of QSOs to find mine. I'll bet this happens a lot during contests.

Guys that do their own QSL logs (like me) can look it up by time and frequency and make a correction to make sure the guy gets the proper QSL.

Last night I rebagged Kuwait, which I did because Kuwait hasn't responded yet. I also rebagged Bosnia and Herezog and Lithuania. Liuthuania is a new one entirely so I sent out a card to  him.

I should leave my list next to the rig so when I hear a call sign I can see if I need him as it gets confusing. Sometimes I do, but not always.

Yesterday a pretty good book came to my door."The Lucky Bastards Club". My day was a Lucky Bastard, having survived 25 missions over Europe and I'll bet it's going to be good reading.

Life expectancy was 15 missions.

If you survived 25 you WERE a lucky bastard.

Anyway that's today's post. Be the first kid on your block to read them all.












To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html