The past week end I was very active on the radio front.
While I do not plan to send in a log, I made about 150 QSOs, giving many stations points for the CQ WW CW contest. All this happened with just 5W output, and the vast majority was done with my solar power/battery system.
Since the solar power input has been quite low the last few weeks, all the radios were connected to mains power in order to let the battery re-charge. At the same time I did not work too much radio.
After a few QSOs in the contest I decided to make this a mainly solar powered event for me. The IC-705 was reconnected to the solar power system and I worked all through the week end, with some battery energy to spare.
My QSO count with 5W this year is now 460. This means that the challenge of working 365 QSOs this year with just 5W (and no weak signal digital modes) has been met.
Now I extend the challenge to 365 QSOs this year with solar power (as well as 5W). This will be an estimate, as I did not count exactly when I started using solar this year. My preliminary estimate will be that I may have met that challenge, too, but I will work some QSO for the rest of the year. I expect to be fairly sure to meet the challenge this year.
Now what will be my personal challenge for next year? I see a few possibilities.
- maybe with an expansion of my solar power it may be possible to run the main part of the station on solar, with the exception of high power amplifiers. We shall see
- maybe I should make my first QSOs on the microwave bands (everything above 1GHz)
- I *should* finish some more kit building
- maybe I should build a more fully home brew TR/RX just for one band, and work some QSOs with it
- maybe run a challenge with even lower power, allowing for the use of weak signal digital modes
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