Here’s what’s happening - in 2021, two operators ( N5HA, Kenneth Bailey & W9AV, Clint Sprott ) managed to work at least 1 park every UTC day. My goal for 2022 is to do the same, and to try and write a short post about the day’s first contact. If you want to play along, feel free - I’ll be sharing updates about it during the monthly POTA updates that I prepare for the various ham radio media outlets.
now that you’re in the know about the Baily-Sprott Challenge, here’s the scoop for today:
Bailey-Sprott Challenge Update
In yesterday’s post, I hinted that I was ‘twisting every knob on the radio’ as I was writing my day 17 post, and trying to catch an early day 18 QSO. As luck will have it, it worked out! I managed to get Brenton, AA6BZ who was at K-1176.
This wasn’t just a normal contact, however! It was late at night, on 40 meters, with what sounded like a mostly dead band. There was only 1 spot for a park, and it was at Mt. Diablo in the ‘Bay Area’ out in California. I spun down to the frequency he was on, and wasn’t really expecting to hear anything, because the conditions just havn’t been good for those frequencies and distances across land. As expected, when I tuned in, all I heard was static. Since there were no other spots, I happened to just leave the radio on frequency while doing other things. After a while, I started hearing these little almost human sounding noises. After some judicious fildding with the RF gain, bandwidth, and shifting the center frequency back and forth, I finally was able to pull him out of the noise by throwing on the attenuator and knocking down some some of the noise. He was just using a hamstick, but it was enough that I was able to copy him at about a 2-2, and sent me a 3-3 in return. Bing bang boom, and done!