K3WWP's Diary

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Saturday, November 07, 2009 7:57 PM - I was a bit surprised when I tuned in to get my streak QSO from the SS this evening. It seemed to me like activity in the SS was much lower than normal, at least on 80 meters where I was listening. I only stayed long enough to work N2NT to keep the streak going, so maybe I was just listening in a lull period. Although the number he gave me - 276 - seemed low for a big contest station like that so maybe activity was down.

As predicted this was a warm dry fall day today. I actually went for two long walks without any jacket or sweater and even started to sweat just a little. The next couple days will be pretty much the same if the predictions are right. I also went for a third long walk this evening, but with a jacket this time.

Early in the day Ange and I buried one of the remaining 5 big fig trees. He had to go somewhere so we just had a couple hours to work. Tomorrow the last two big trees in the garden near here and then the two at his house either Monday or maybe Wednesday depending on whether or not he has any substitute teaching assignments. It will be nice to get them done, although I'd sooner it was time to dig them up in the spring as that means good weather is returning. Now the burials just kind of herald the miserable weather of winter. -30-

Friday, November 06, 2009 8:01 PM - I spent a good part of the day doing computer work for a friend. It was kind of chilly today so it was a good day to be working inside. However things are going to change this weekend with sunny skies and temperatures in the 60's. I might even get in some fishing, although the water is pretty cold now and I doubt the fish will be all that active. I'll have to get lucky and land the bait on their little 'fish plate' right in front of their mouths or they probably won't go looking for it. I guess you can probably do that if you have a boat and a fish finder, but I have neither. Can't afford them, it's too much work taking care of a boat, and it makes fishing too easy and eliminates a lot of the challenge to fishing. That's how I look at it.

This weekend is one of the better contests in which you actually have to copy the exchange rather than just logging 599 and some other small bit of info for each contact. Of course I'm talking about the ARRL Sweepstakes. However with the nice weather coming up, I probably won't do much at all in the contest except maybe use it for my daily QSO. There won't be many more nice days to hang around outside, but there will be other contests coming up this winter when there's a foot of sn*w on the ground and temperatures are well below fre*zing. -30-

Thursday, November 05, 2009 7:28 PM - I thought the Weather World program from Penn State University had a clever opening last evening. For those of you not familiar with the program, the two hosts have a little 30-45 second banter between themselves between the intro and the forecast. They said something like it sure is NOvember like today - NO sun - NO warmth - NO leaves. There are a lot of other negatives you can apply to this month - NO light in the evening - NO fishing - NO pleasant walks, and on and on. For anyone suffering from depression, this absolutely has to be one of the worst months with very little positive to be said about it. I guess there are a couple of things to be thankful for, and they deal with giving thanks. On November 11, we thank all the service veterans for fighting to keep our country free. We owe our freedoms in large part to them. Then later in the month it's the feast of Thanksgiving where we again give thanks for our freedom in being able to enjoy the wonderful meals that we do in this country because of our free enterprise system. It's also a time for prayer that we can continue to hold on to our freedoms and not have them taken away from us. -30-

Wednesday, November 04, 2009 10:49 PM - I spent most of today getting the list of names of NAQCC members ready for subscribing to our new NAQCC-News mail list. Tomorrow I'll be subscribing the 3,441 names on the list which was compiled from the 8 separate lists that our emailers have been using to send out our NAQCC newsletter announcements. If all goes well tomorrow then we'll have a mail list with which we can send out timely club news items as well as our regular newsletter announcements by simply posting the info to the mail list which will re-distribute it to all signed up members. It will be a nice and needed feature as the NAQCC prepares to reach the 4,000 member mark in another month or so. -30-

Tuesday, November 03, 2009 8:57 PM - Here's an exotic way of zero beating sent as a diary comment by Geoffrey AE4RV. "Regarding proper CW tuning, there is a very sophisticated and also very easy way to zero beat a CW frequency visually, by using the waterfall display on a computer set up for digi-modes. Just tune the radio until the signal you want to work is on your sidetone frequency, visually. It takes about 1.2 seconds. Particularly useful for the tone-deaf or lazy, I suppose, but if one has the setup available, it is really convenient. I usually do it by ear but I am not above throwing the technology at hand at a problem.

I realize this might be a controversial method to a CW-only op, and that wide-band digi-modes can be a real nuisance, but a lot of hams have sound card interfaces and can easily use this method to aid CW tuning..... I am interested in your ongoing zero-beat/rig experiment...please be sure and report back."

Oh I will. I want to get a lot more data first though.

Other than voting and burying a couple more fig trees (six down and six to go now), nothing much out of the ordinary to mention about today. It's depressing to see it getting dark so early now with standard time back in effect. However in just a month and 4 days now we will have the earliest sunset of the year here near the 40th parallel north. So that's something to look forward to, even though the gain of evening light the first month or so after that date doesn't amount to much. It is going in the right direction though. -30-

Monday, November 02, 2009 9:06 PM - As I said a couple weeks ago when writing about zero beating, I was going to keep track of the rigs I work and how far off zb they were.

So far I've gathered 17 reports. Of the 17, only 7 were close enough to be called zero beat. That is probably within 20 Hz or so of my frequency. Farthest off was 570 Hz high in freq, and ranged down to 290 Hz low in frequency. Oddly enough both extremes came from ICOM rigs, a 756P2 and a 706. The zb's came from a variety of rigs including a rather old TS-520. I also kept track of drift direction, down, up, or stable in frequency. That started off with two that drifted low, and after that, the last 15 were stable in frequency.

That's just a quick summary. I plan to gather a lot more stats to give a better analysis to see if any conclusion can be drawn as to whether non-zb is a fault of the rig, op, or both. Of course I'll never get a large enough sample to produce completely accurate results, but I think it will nevertheless prove interesting.

Along with tracking rig data, I'm also starting work on our November NAQCC Challenge, as usual an alphabet challenge dealing with words relating to Thanksgiving.

I just finished posting all our NAQCC challenge rules for January through December 2010. We have some traditional ones and some newly conceived ones for 2010, thanks to our NAQCC President Tom WY3H who has taken over managing the challenges now.

One thing that is very rewarding to me is working someone, telling them about the NAQCC, and then finding their application in my email shortly after the QSO is over. That happened tonight with Phil, WA1JHV, whose application I'll be processing shortly, following a very nice rag chew on 80M. I'm looking forward to the day not too far off now when I'll be assigning #4000 to someone. Only about 55 to go now. -30-

Sunday, November 01, 2009 7:57 PM - Every once in a while I hear that there is a lot of discussion on this Internet forum, or on this mail list, or other such types of communication about how ham radio seems to be dying out, and the participants are complaining about the dying out over and over again. Well...DUH!! If they'd get up off their ***es and fire up their rigs and get on the air, ham radio would be alive and well. There is entirely to much potential air time being wasted in other pursuits. Some of them are legitimate pursuits, but I can't see wasting time in an Internet chat room as being one of them, especially if the purpose of being in the chat room is to complain about the death of amateur radio. It just boggles my mind.

It also makes me glad to be associated with the NAQCC. We do not encourage our members to waste time by having a forum, chat room, mail reflector or any such nonsense. We encourage our members who wish to communicate, to do it via amateur radio, and more specifically via Morse Code.

Of course we do have a web site, but it is more just like what clubs had in the past. It's an information packet and newsletter, not a place to hang out and waste time. You go to the web site briefly to check on a piece of information, then get back on the air again.

Sorry for getting on the soapbox, but that irritates me. I'll get down now.

I'm going to make up my work sheet now for our NAQCC November Thanksgiving Alphabet challege. Oh, that's another way we encourage our members to get on the air and help preserve ham radio. These monthly challenges we have are designed solely for that purpose.

Those of you who regularly follow this diary know that I do not have television in my house here. That's just another time waster. However I have been able to watch a couple sporting events on ESPN 360. That's a really nice web site. I watched the opening MSL playoff game between Houston and Seattle. A lot of the events are on a delay basis, but some are live as well. So that will give me something to do (in addition to more ham radio) this winter when I'm more or less snowed in here. -30-

Saturday, October 31, 2009 9:30 PM - Another month is in the books, as the saying goes, but in reality, not yet. I've got just about all my end of month/beginning of month updates yet to do on the web site, the NAQCC, and life in general.

So I'm not going to take much time for this entry. It was a typical middle-of-fall day here. Cloudy, light rain, breezy, and chilly. I did manage a couple of walks, but it was not as pleasant as the warm summer walks. I also raked some leaves. I don't have any decidious trees, but get more than my share of leaves from the trees next door. They really need trimming back, but that's another story.

I wonder just why folks say they're running QRP and then say their power is 10, 13, 15 or so watts. I'm getting more and more of that, it seems. I think I went into that before about QRP and its definition. In one sense it has come to mean 5 watts power output or less, while the classic definition as a Q signal simply means to reduce power. So if you go from 1,000 watts to 800 watts that is QRP by that definition. Still I think the folks who say they are QRP at 13 watts aren't saying that because they just reduced power from 20 watts. Actually the whole list of Q signals have evolved in meaning as has much of the English language for that matter. And again that's another story.

I wish my friend from my WPIT days could be here saying, "but, that's another story!" Tom McGough had his own unique way of putting real meaning into that phase, but that's yet another story. HI. -30-

Friday, October 30, 2009 7:16 PM - Doom and a carrier - topics for this entry.

Since I last wrote about Doom, I've played two more complete 30 level wads.

Plutonia 2 is a very involved wad with huge levels and intricate switching systems. Activating a door is something like travelling from NYC to Chicage to throw a switch that opens a door back in NYC. There's a lot of backtracking. Game play is very good though and it's very challenging overall. It took a lot of time to figure out some of the intricacies in some of the levels.

Scythe is similar in one way to the original Doom. There are some very easy levels at the beginning which progress to harder levels as the game goes along. Level 30 is absolutely awesome. There's no shooting rockets at the "devil's head" to end the game as in many wads. You 'just' have to kill over 800 monsters to win the level. Many of the monsters are cyberdemons, and there is an abundance of archviles to bring back to life many of the monsters you already killed. I played the level in God mode. I really don't see how any normal person could make it through that level without 'cheating' unless they are a supreme expert doom player.

NAQCC President Tom WY3H has been in contact with the ARRL about the mystery strong carrier that has been showing up on 40 meters around 7039.5 kHz. As a result, the ARRL has filed a complaint with the FCC. Here's what the ARRL had to say in an email to Tom:

"Good morning Tom,
Nothing specific yet, I did ask the FCC to check it out and they opened a case on it. Other later reports indicate some type of modulation is being heard, primarily digital, someone suggested WSJT and that it could be hams making normal QSOs but due to the constant nature of most reports, that doesn't seem likely. Here is a light-hearted look at the mode. http://www.pe2pe.eu/WSJT_on_HF.htm. It's possible there are two different signals being heard on or near the frequency.
73,
Chuck Skolaut, K0BOG
Field & Regulatory Correspondent
ARRL, The national association for Amateur Radio"

Let's hope that something can be done about this interference to CW near the 40M QRP frequency. Soon the digital crap will be taking over the whole CW areas of the ham bands. -30-

Thursday, October 29, 2009 2:24 PM - I'm just sitting here at the computer getting some odds and ends caught up on, and thought I'd get my diary entry written early since I might go and watch the Halloween parade this evening. It's a nice late October day, although a bit cool at just around the low 50's. The sun is just breaking out so that may warm it up a bit.

Right now, I think I'll go for a walk and stop off at the grocery store to get a sales flyer to see what I can buy on sale this coming week. Grocery prices are really skyrocketing the past few months now. One example is oyster crackers. They went from just over a dollar to $1.69 a package now, and I bet the package is a little smaller. That's just for the generic brand too. The name brand is $3.69 for a similar sized package. Whew! If that keeps up, how are people going to eat? I have to make use of sale items and coupons to get by here. I don't foresee things getting any better either.

I think I've moved up a step in my relationship with Joe. Yesterday afternoon, Bruce was holding him on their swing when I came out on our porch. Joe looked over at me and Bruce said he started trembling. He often does that when he gets excited at seeing Bruce or Nancy after they've been away for a little bit. But I think that's the first time he's done that for me. He has always seemed glad to see me, but no trembling till yesterday that I know of. -30-

Wednesday, October 28, 2009 7:21 AM - I got good response about Sara's video I posted the other day. Well, today is the 45th anniversary of a wonderful campaign speech by one of my heroes for another of my heroes who incidentally was a ham with the call of K7UGA. Aha, now you know I'm speaking about Barry Goldwater who ran for president in 1964 and unfortunately lost. Who was the speaker? A former actor who did win the presidential election in 1980 and 1984. That's right, Ronald Reagan. I'm listening to that speech right now and it's scary how closely it still applies today. Should you want to listen to this 30 minute speech sometime, it's here -30-

Tuesday, October 27, 2009 9:23 PM - Today was a busy day working on a friend's computer and printer. That took up a good part of the afternoon, but we made good progress, and that was important. Actually that was part one of her problem we solved - getting a new printer hooked up to her new computer. I had some trouble getting the install program to finish, but finally traced it to Norton Anti-virus/Firewall. When I temporarily disabled that, it installed like a dream. That took some time, so transferring some software from her old to new computer had to wait for another day. Her computer runs Windows Vista, and that was the first time I've really used Vista. Like all Windows versions before it, Vista works like a dream, and has a lot of great features not found on XP.

I know Vista is a pretty old system now, but I never upgrade until Microsoft comes out with at least one full service pack for a new operating system. If you think about it with the millions of computers active in the world today, there is no possible way for Microsoft to test their software on the literally millions of different configurations those millions of computers represent. I prefer to wait until any software has been thoroughly field tested to the point of a service pack being issued before I will upgrade.

In this case however, I felt that, just like ME and 2000 between 98 and XP, Vista was a system put out like ME and 2000 to fill a gap while Windows 7 was being developed. I think that the series 98, XP, and 7 is the route to go in upgrading operating systems. So my next new computer will probably be purchased when SP-1 for 7 comes out.

The sun hasn't pushed the snooze button yet. The SF remained above 80 again today. Since tomorrow is supposed to be rainy here and I don't have any other big projects that I know of, perhaps I'll just check the higher bands and see what this latest little flurry of solar activity has done to them, if anything. -30-

Monday, October 26, 2009 9:55 PM - From Carl N5XE, "Just checked...Solar Flux up to 81 with 28 sunspots! Come on sun...". Yup, we're still going up the SF scale. Can this be the real awakening, or will the Sun press the snooze button again. Stay tuned to this station for the exciting next episode of 'As the Sun Turns'.

Not only the solar weather is looking good, but the weather in this corner of the Earth is likewise looking good. Another mostly sunny day with temperatures in the upper 60's. I went over the 10 mile mark in walking for something like 5 of the last 6 days now. Also did some more outside work around the house. Of course spent some time with Joe also.

I didn't go fishing though as I was kind of discouraged by my last three trips with virtually no bites at all. As I've said before, I don't mind if they bite and I don't catch them, but when they don't even bite, that gets to be boring. I love keeping busy, and when they don't bite, that's hard to do. Then I tend to start picking up rocks and tossing them at pop cans or something like that. I could never make a good 'couch potato' by any means.

Conditions on 80M continue good. Wish they had been this good for our NAQCC anniversary celebration week. Only took a very few CQ's to get my streak QSO this evening from N2CHI in NY. -30-

Sunday, October 25, 2009 8:48 PM - Well, it took Paul N0NBD about 75 milliseconds after I posted yesterday's diary entry to email and say the last time the SF was at 76 was back on April 8 this year. Tnx Paul. And you know what? It's 76 again today. Now when's the last time it was 76 or higher two days in a row? HI. Maybe that same time?

Anyway 80M which shouldn't really be affected by a high SF that much, sure sounded good this evening. I had a 2XQRP/599 QSO with Tim K3XI in VA and heard another QRPer with a solid 599 signal from PA. Tom WY3H told me he worked Colombia on 17M late this afternoon. Are these all signs of better things to come on the bands? I sure hope so, as with the miserable winter weather coming, I'll be outside less and looking for things to do indoors. Working the ham bands would be one of the nicer things to be doing. -30-

Saturday, October 24, 2009 9:24 PM - Another somewhat rainy day today with strong breezes later in the day. Enough good breaks to go over the 10 mile mark walking and enjoying the beautiful fall colors which are right at their peak now. I took quite a few pictures, and if time ever permits, I'll post some of them on my SkyDrive site.

Some feedback on the Sara video from yesterday from Paul N0NBD, who writes, "Hello John, I am about to leave for a short fishing day but just listened to the young lady's speech. She makes some VERY good points. There is some hope after all. CUl de Paul N0NBD."

Yes, there is hope for sure with young people like her still around.

Another thing I did today was set up a Mail List for our NAQCC on QTH.net. It still needs fine tuning before we use it, but I think it will be very useful in disseminating news about QRP/CW to our nearly 4,000 members. It also will serve to remind members of the posting of our twice monthly NAQCC newsletter.

I also spent some good time with Joe today, and also with Nancy's twin 7 year old grandkids. I hadn't seen them for a while now.

So looking back on what I wrote, it was a pretty nice day here.

Well, I had this all ready to post, but when I went to update my propagation page, I noticed the SF today was 76!!! Can anybody remember the last time it was that high? I can't without looking it up which I'm not going to do now, but maybe for tomorrow's entry unless one of you beats me to it and lets me know. -30-

Friday, October 23, 2009 10:00 PM - This was kind of a dull drab day today with overcast skies and light rain a good deal of the time. The temperatures were not bad with a high of 63 though.

I really didn't do much of anything out of the ordinary today worth talking about, so I'm going to share a short video with you that a friend of mine pointed out to me. I was very moved by it, and am glad that there are young folks like this 11 year old girl named Sara who know what America is all about. As my friend pointed out, she didn't use a teleprompter for her speech and it doesn't look like she was even reading a script. What she said came straight from her heart. Watch it here! -30-

Thursday, October 22, 2009 9:03 PM - Another nice day here. A high temperature of 74 is not bad for this time of year here in Western PA. The clouds were on the increase all day and it looks like we're in for a rainy weekend. So I did some more yard cleanup work today and got in several walks. I'm just short of 12 miles for the day right now.

The bands sure have been empty the past few evenings and it's taken me quite a while to get my daily QSO. Just about 25 minutes of calling CQ this evening before I got any decent response. One station did call me, I think. He sent only his call slightly off frequency, and when I turned it back to him after my first round, I never heard a trace of him again. So maybe he wasn't calling me, but just fooling around.

I was kind of discouraged by the lack of biting by the fish the past couple days, so I decided not to go today. Maybe if we get a break in the rain the next couple days, I'll give it a try to see if the rainfall got them going again. Not much time left in my fishing season now, so I'll probably wind up in the 120's for the number of fish caught which will be only my 13th best year since 1992. -30-

Wednesday, October 21, 2009 9:58 PM - If you look at my QSO of the day table, that's not a mistake. The same station KD8JRB answered my CQ yesterday and today. Our first QSO suffered from a lot of QSB and QRN. The one tonight was better and he had an interesting story to tell. He was a USCG radio op back in 1963 and of course used CW then. It took a long time, but he got back to CW just about a year ago when his son helped him get a ham license. As I told him, it's always nice when a newcomer to ham radio uses CW.

Today was pretty much a copy of yesterday in more ways than the QSO also. So I won't bother listing all the details again. Actually about the only thing I did today that I didn't do yesterday was to get rid of the Siberian tomato plant I had brought indoors. It just didn't make it. So that means my total of tomatoes for the year was 208 plus the 4 left on the Siberian plant.

Looking ahead to tomorrow, it might be another day pretty much like today, and that's good, because these last couple days have had beautiful weather and quite a bit of relaxation for me. Oh, one other difference today - I got shut out fishing. They were biting lightly on my peanut butter bread, but I couldn't hook them. Absolutely nothing touched my night crawler. As I said, the water is very cold now, and I'm sure that has slowed down the activity of the fish quite a bit. So if you don't throw the bait near to them, they don't do much searching around for it. -30-

Tuesday, October 20, 2009 10:34 PM - This was a fairly relaxing day for a change. I walked Joe with Bruce early this morning, had some brunch, then Bruce came over to do some computer work. Joe came along and seemed to enjoy his visit over here. He seemed to be more relaxed than he had been in previous visits. After that, I went fishing for about 2 1/2 hours, and caught a 22 inch carpsucker just as I was getting ready to leave with a shutout. Next it was helping Ange clean up the garden getting ready for winter. Gee, it was hard to type that word. I hate to see it coming. I'd sooner be planting in the spring. A supper, then a walk in the park. Home again and over to see Joe who was alone with Nancy and Bruce going out for a dinner. I walked Joe for about 15 minutes, and then we sat on my porch just watching things go by, what little there was of that on this dead end street. I guess we sat there about 45 minutes or so. Then I took Joe over home, and came back here for another quick walk down to the park and back, had a snack, got my daily QSO, and am now doing some computer work including typing this entry, obviously. Not a bad day after all the hectic ones lately, and tomorrow should be more of the same. Oh, my computer work for the afternoon today was cancelled, hence the fishing. -30-

Monday, October 19, 2009 6:13 PM - Things have quieted down nicely today after the big stressful week with the NAQCC 5th Anniversary celebration and a myriad of other things.

I even had time now to log my eQSL's and LotW matches that had accumulated for a couple weeks. I'm now over the 10,000 mark in LotW matches at 10,015 at the moment.

It was a beautiful day weatherwise for a change and there's a couple more even nicer days to follow. Just a tad too chilly with a breeze today to go fishing. However I did help a friend harvest some grapes and also sat out on the porch with Bruce and Joe, something I haven't done for a while because of the cold weather.

I hope to squeeze in some fishing the next couple days although tomorrow I have to do some computer work for a friend in the afternoon.

The Siberian tomato plant I brought indoors isn't doing too well. I probably should have brought it in sooner, I guess. -30-

Sunday, October 18, 2009 9:01 PM - Working a quick QSO with N9LAH in the IL QP extended the streak to its 5555th day. I like that number.

I got some feedback on the zero beat entries. First from Chuck W8LQ who reads the diary every day. He says, "The advice you gave to your N#A operators about using the RIT was exactly right. My old Corsair front panel has the paint scratched off from my left index fingernail working the RIT Knob. My Omni VI+ RIT knob sticks out from the panel and doesn't suffer from that problem.
I take umbrage at your shot at us old geezers, though. Rather than lack of zero beat being a sign of advanced senility, stupidity or tone deafness consider the fact that rigs from the analog days did not transmit on the display frequency, but were purposely offset in the alignment process for a CW frequency about 700 cps (alright...Hz!) +/- the display. The newer (not necessarily better) synthesized or digital rigs transmit on the display frequency and depend on the I.F.passband being +/- the proper amount to receive signals.
Just for fun I set up my Corsair (good old L-C oscillator that I had aligned for 700 cycles CW key down offset, per the instruction book) and my Omni (synthesized but not digital main oscillator) so I can transmit or receive on either one on the bench, receiving or transmitting on the other as appropriate.
I set both displays at 7000.00 and observed:
Omni as Tx, had to RIT the Corsair + 700 cps to get thru a 250 Hz filter Corsair as TX, HAD TO RIT the Omni -700 cps for proper tone thru the 250 Hz filter.
Leaving both displays at 7000.0, no RIT, 250 Hz filters:
Corsair xmit....Omni received signal out of the pass band; Omni xmit.....Corsair had a zero beat signal.
So maybe it's not us old crabby guys, it might be (in some cases) old but still sweet equipment. Except for the L-C oscillator drift my Corsair is just as good as my Omni, and has a a heck of a lot better received audio than the Omni. The Omni might be marginally better on our favorite mode...CW. I do work SSB twice a week for schedules on 40 fone with my old pals back in Niagara Falls, as well as my son, (would you believe W2WOE?!!) in Delaware. (He's working on his Morse code. I gave him my old J-38 key and built him a code practice oscillator!)"

As always, Chuck comes up with some very good points. Before I address that though, I should say Chuck and I have been ham friends since way back in the 1960's. Chuck's reference to his son having the W2WOE call struck me as very believable. You see, that used to be Chuck's call way back when. It's nice his son could get it now. That's one of only a very few positive features of the vanity call sign program. Otherwise... well that's another story.

Yes, I suppose old rigs also contribute to the lack of zero beating today, although when you used a separate transmitter and receiver, it was easy to truly zero beat someone to within a few Hz. All you did then was feed a low level signal from the xmtr into the rcvr with the BFO turned off, and tuned the xmtr till the beat note got lower and lower, then disappeared (or went to zero Hz leading to the term zero beat).

Then when transceivers came along, there were many different ways of managing the transmit and receive frequencies within the unit until the system of matching the receive offset frequency to the sidetone monitor arrived. So when you tuned in a signal to produce the exact same pitch as the sidetone, you were perfectly zero beat. Best of all, in many units, you can adjust the sidetone to a pleasing tone for you to listen to, and the rcve offset will match whatever tone you set it to.

That is still hard to do for folks who are tone deaf whereas at the other extreme, those with perfect pitch can match the frequencies to a few Hz or better by ear. There is a neat unit that can do the matching for you described in my CW section on the Zero Beat Ckt page. The designer of that circuit is now a SK, but my friend Elwood WB0OEW has built the unit and uses it regularly to precisely zero beat the stations he works. His unit is pictured on the page also. I've never built nor used the unit myself, so if you have any questions about it, perhaps Elwood can answer anything you may ask me.

Going back to Chuck's info now. I told him I think I'll keep track (after things wind down from one of my most hectic weeks ever) of the stations I work, noting their rig and how far off freq they are. Then I'll compile a list, without mentioning names or calls, of the various rigs and how far off frequency they are. So look for that a few months down the road when I build up a large enough database to perhaps show if it is old rigs at fault or operators. HI. -30-

Saturday, October 17, 2009 7:48 PM - Tune in tomorrow for zero beat info. Th-th-th-that's all folks.

This has been probably one of the most hectic weeks of my life with our NAQCC anniversary celebration, our sprint, etc. on top of a lot of other things I won't go into here.

Hopefully by tomorrow evening things will start to ease off a bit and I will have a quiet week to recover. -30-

Friday, October 16, 2009 11:03 AM - I've had complaints from a couple of our N#A stations about folks not knowing how to zero beat. Those are valid complaints. Let me elaborate by copying an email I sent to one of the N#A ops.

"The most used button/knob on both my 570 and 480 is the RIT control. I would say that less than half my QSO's are with stations who zero beat my CQ's. I routinely work folks up to as much as 750 Hz or more off frequency. Without that valuable RIT knob, I would not have nearly as many QSO's as I do. After every CQ I have to spin that RIT knob up and down 500 Hz or so to search for answers, and even then I don't catch some who are further off frequency than that.

And it's not only newcomers to ham radio who don't know how to zero beat. Old-timers have either forgotten how, or are newcomers to the CW mode. I think far too many CW newcomers come from an atmosphere that is geared to channelized operation, that is the VHF/UHF world of repeaters. They just tune their HF rig dials to a certain frequency, whether or not it is near to the station they are trying to work. They think the QRP frequency on 80, for example is 3560.00000 and use that to answer anyone they can hear in their probably too wide passband from 3559 to 3561.

Another factor is that many CW hams are old and perhaps getting tone deaf. They are incapable of matching the audio tone of a received CW signal to that of their sidetone monitor tone which in the vast majority of modern rigs will produce a zero beat signal.

Also many hams along with folks in general are 'dumbed down' to the point where it is virtually impossible to teach them anything more complicated than how to wake up in the morning. And teaching zero beating is somewhat complicated although the actual process of zero beating is easy enough to do, once learned."

I'd be remiss in stating the problem without offering a solution, so in a future entry, perhaps tomorrow, I'll offer some tips on how to zero beat correctly, although as I said it is a bit hard to explain to some folks. -30-

Thursday, October 15, 2009 10:21 PM - In just a couple days now, my streak will reach an interesting number - 5,555 days. I guess there's no significance to that, but I thought I'd mention it since I don't really have a lot more to talk about today.

I operated some N3A this evening on 80M and wound up with 7 QSO's in about an hour and 45 minutes. When things looked like they weren't going to pick up at all, to amuse myself I rotated calling CQ with my straight key, bug, and keyer. I seem to be able to seamlessly go among all three of them and do quite well with each one. It still amazes me that I can use a bug and keyer back to back with no problem whatsoever. I never even dreamed that would be possible. I should have gotten a bug long ago to replace the one I loaned away that was never returned back in the 60's.

It's really feeling more like December here than mid-October. Right now it's just 34 degrees with a chance of some snow in the forecasts for the next 2 or 3 days before a fairly good warm-up next week (hope that part of the outlook is correct!) into the low 60's with a lot of sunshine.

Well I've got some more sprint logs to process and some other emails to take care of so I better get to that now before the pile gets any bigger. -30-

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 10:15 PM - I've been busy again today with NAQCC business and then this evening had a computer club meeting. Right now my brain is tired, but I will try to at least write something.

I cleaned out my garden a few days ago and left one of the Siberian tomato plants. I may have mentioned that earlier, but anyway I found a big flower pot in the basement today and put the Siberian in it and now have it sitting in the kitchen where it started life as a tiny sprout way back in January. It has a few green tomatoes on it and some pretty good looking foliage. I'm just going to see what happens with it. Perhaps it will just die off in a few days or maybe the tomatoes will ripen. Maybe it will get some more new growth like it did about 6 weeks ago after it looked pretty dismal then. Always interesting to experiment with things to maybe learn something new.

I did a bit of N3A operating today. I haven't had much time for that after our shortened portable operation back on Monday. I made 6 QSO's in a couple sessions. Condiions weren't too much better than for our sprint last evening. -30-

Tuesday, October 13, 2009 11:52 PM - It's late, I'm tired and hungry, and not very talkative right now. Nothing wrong, it's just been a busy evening operating our NAQCC sprint under rather horrible propagation conditions - then processing the logs as they come in. I see conditions were not that good anywhere, so I'm not too displeased with my 26 QSO's and 14 multipliers even though it's my lowest score in quite a while now. Anyway, I'm off to the kitchen now for some kind of snack. -30-

Monday, October 12, 2009 9:48 PM - A great, fun day here with Mike KC2EGL. He arrived around 9 AM and we worked out the final details about setting up for our portable N3A operation. Before we left for the park, we took Joe out for a walk. I'm not going to say too much about our portable operation. That will be covered in the October 31 NAQCC Newsletter in detail with pictures. I will say that because of very low wind-chill temperatures, we cut down our operation time from 3 to just 1 1/2 hours. It's hard to operate when you're shivering severely.

Before we left for the park we also started on assembling Mike's new telescope, but had to cut that short for Joe's walk and it was getting time to head for the park. When we came back from the park, we stopped at a Vocelli's Pizza Shop for a couple pizzas. We brought them home, and decided to let them cool while we took Joe out again. Then after we finished that and ate the pizza, we planned to finish the scope.

However when we were out walking Joe, a car pulled up beside us and told us to get a real dog. It turned out to be my friend Bob W3BBO from up in Erie who drove down to try to surprise us at the park, but that fell through due to our early departure. Anyway we talked with Bob for a while, then asked him to drive to my home and we'd see him there after we walked Joe home.

We all met at my house, and I gave Bob the dime tour of my shack and antennas. Then he wanted to see where we had operated from, so he drove to the park and set up his rig. Mike and I stayed at my house and I worked Bob using both N3A and my own call.

It was very nice and certainly a huge surprise to run into Bob that way. We've worked each other on the air quite a few times, and he usually comes to the Butler hamfests and we get together there when Tom WY3H and I attend.

Now after we did eat the pizza, we got back to assembling the scope again. It went fairly smoothly although there were a few ticklish spots. We all got a kick out of the assembly manual for the computer drive motors. The manual said it would probably take several attempts to get the mounting screw where it was supposed to go. I quickly said that wasn't right, it would probably take us MANY attempts to get it. I said the manual was underrating our incompetence. Mike and I always are making cracks like that, and I could really expand this entry if I listed all the ones from today. Anyway, it turns out they actually overrated our incompetence as we got the thing mounted after only 2 tries.

We did have a problem getting the drive to run though. Mike had a power cube, and when that was plugged in, the motors refused to budge. Then we tried the included battery pack, but the 4 D cells we used of mine were old and put out nowhere near to 6 volts. So it was off to Wal-Mart to get 4 new cells. They worked fine. We still don't know why the power cube didn't work.

The weather never did co-operate with us today. Not only the cold winds at the park, but overcast skies so we didn't get to try the scope on any celestial objects. That will come another time. The scope looks to be a very nice one, and I'm looking forward to see how its performance compares to mine. I'm sure it will be a little better since it is some 24 years newer, although specs out about the same other than it being a Newtonian and mine a Cassegrain. -30-

Sunday, October 11, 2009 8:29 PM - I'm glad our NAQCC Anniversary week is underway. Maybe I can slow down a little bit now from all the frantic activities to get it set up and running. I hope so anyway - it's been hectic.

I've worked two of our special event stations so far - N0A op by KD0V, and N3A op by WY3H. 7 of the 10 stations are active these first two hours (0000 and 0100Z), and I'm going to try to add a couple more to my log after 0100Z. Right now 5 of the 7 are out of range from here, either too close or too far, but it will be better when some of them switch bands at 0100. I should be able to get N1A, N2A, and N9A. Possibly N5A also. N7A will be rough.

I've been so busy I didn't even make one single QSO in the PA QSO Party this weekend. I just didn't feel like doing any contesting. However I'm gearing up for our NAQCC sprint this Tuesday evening for sure. Those are by far my favorite contests/sprints of all, and the only ones I seem to enter seriously any more - well plus the big DX contests - I still love them and make every effort to put a lot of time into them, even at this low point in the sunspot cycle. I'd love to get KL7 on 80 meters in either the CQWW or ARRL DX tests this season like I did with KH6 in the ARRL DX test this year. That would complete QRP WAS on 80M for me.

Looking forward to spending the day with Mike KC2EGL tomorrow with our three projects I mentioned in an earlier diary entry.

I also will be kind of dogsitting Joe tomorrow as Bruce and Nancy will be away most of the day. Gosh, I guess things aren't slowing down any after all. HI Just changing to different things to keep me busy. Oh well, as I say, better busy than doing nothing - and a lot healthier also. -30-

Saturday, October 10, 2009 9:26 PM - As I'm typing this, I'm watching some Canadian Football in another window on an ESPN Internet site. I've loved the Canadian game for a long time, although it has been hard to follow it here on American television. I just stumbled across it here on the Internet as I was watching some college football. Toronto is playing in Saskatechewan with Saskatchewan leading 7-0 midway through the first period.

Many years ago, I guess it would be in the 70's and 80's I was able to watch a lot of CFL games on ESPN-TV. I soon became an Edmonton Eskimos fan. They were the class of the CFL in that era with Warren Moon at QB, and players like Jim Germany, K Dave Cutler, WR Brian Kelly, and many other great players whose names escape my memory right now. Then later on they had other players like KR Henry "Gizmo" Williams. What a delight to watch him run back a kickoff, often times for a touchdown. Many call him the greatest kick returner EVER.

I guess I'm getting old as other names should come to mind. I'll have to cheat and look them up on the Internet. There is one QB in particular I'm trying to remember - oh, Matt Dunigan who came along after Warren Moon came back to the USA NFL ranks. And the coach in the Moon era was Hugh Campbell who also went to the NFL ranks. That's about the extent I can come up with from memory. Now I'm going to look on the Internet. I want to mention a couple other players whom I admired but the names escape me now.

Damon Allen was another of the many great QB's to play for the Eskimos. KR-R Larry Highbaugh was almost as exciting as Gizmo Williams on kick returns. There were others as well, but I'll stop here and give you some reasons why I love the CFL game.

The larger field, 12 players on a side, 1 yard neutral zone, several backfield players in motion not only laterally, but forward as well, the kick return rules mandating a runback, the 1 point rouge, and several other minor differences make for an extremely wide open game, quit often very high scoring. I don't get too excited by a 3-0 or 7-6 NFL game. Give me a 42-35 CFL game instead. Although to be fair, the NFL game has opened up more now also. Well, back to watching the game now. -30-

Friday, October 09, 2009 9:11 PM - The latest updated weather forecast (outlook) for Monday is for partly sunny and 58. That's a change from showers, so maybe Mike KC2EGL and I will have nice weather for our parkpedition N3A operation on Monday afternoon.

Looking at the latest STEREO images on my propagation page indicates that one of the two cycle 24 sunspots that appeared a couple weeks ago has survived a full rotation and is about to re-appear on the visible side of the Sun if it lasts a few more days. So perhaps we'll jack the SF up into the 70's again.

Other than that, not much more radio news. We were to have a rainy day all day today, but as has happened so many times the past couple of years now, we got split with some heavy rain going north and some south leaving us with about a third of an inch of rain and enough gaps in the rain to get in some fishing. I boosted my total to 121 for the year today with 3 fish caught. It was nice sitting by the river which was almost perfectly smooth with no wind blowing. When that happens, you can see the tiniest bite on your bait. I like that. No need to figure out if it was a fish, a wave or wind that moved the tip of your pole. However after many years of fishing I've learned to filter out a bite from those other disturbances just like filtering a CW signal out of the QRN. The brain makes a very effective filter in both cases. -30-

Thursday, October 08, 2009 7:43 PM - Coincidentally after my troubles with Comodo Anti-Virus yesterday, today I learned that Microsoft has just released its own FREE anti-virus, anti-spyware program. So I immediately uninstalled the Anti-Virus portion of Comodo (kept their firewall), and installed Microsoft Security Essentials. As with every Microsoft product I've ever installed, this installation went as smooth as glass. I then updated it with the latest virus definitions - another smooth process. Next it ran a quick scan (about 20 minutes) of my system and found it to be clean as a whistle. It has a real time scanner that constantly looks for viruses and spyware and blocks them if it is positive from its database that it is indeed a virus or spyware for sure. If it is not sure, it will ask me what to do about it.

From the talk around the net, this is really a superb product and the PAID security suites are scurrying to keep up with it. It was even recommended by one pretty severe Microsoft basher.

Sound interesting? Check it out here.

Only a couple days now till our NAQCC 5th Anniversary celebration gets underway. Mike KC2EGL and I will be operating N3A portable on Monday afternoon. See the NAQCC web site - Main section - N#A Operation page for a full schedule of all N#A special event stations from the 12th through the 18th and join in the fun. Monday I also will be turning over handling of all our NAQCC prizes and giveaways to Mike. And for a third Monday project, we'll be assembling, setting up, and hopefully trying out his new telescope he bought that arrived Tuesday. I say hopefully as the outlook for Monday is for showers in the evening. But outlooks are not always right. In fact once you get beyond 36-48 hours, weather forecasting is still far from an exact science.

Almost time now for me to go get my QSO of the day. The bands have been kind of dead here in the 0000Z hour the past several days and it's taken several minutes of calling CQ to get my QSO, but I still get it every evening either by someone finally answering my CQ or going searching to answer someone else's CQ. There have been only a miniscule number of days I've had to put it off to the next morning or afternoon because of conditions. -30-

Wednesday, October 07, 2009 8:27 PM - A very windy day in Kittanning today. I just missed getting creamed by a falling limb in the park today. As I was walking, I heard a noise behind me and saw a limb from our 200+ years old Cottonwood tree had fallen about 50-75 feet behind me on the path.

It was too windy to go fishing, but I did wind up walking almost 13 miles in 4 or 5 different walks today.

The day started out on a bad note. When I turned on my computer, it was running v--e--r--y s--l--o--w. I couldn't even get any programs to start, but I finally did call up Task Manager and found cmdagent.exe was hogging 99 percent of the cpu time constantly. I figured correctly that was part of my Comodo Internet Security Suite. I rebooted a couple of times and the same thing happened. So finally I booted into Safe Mode, and was able to open some programs that way. I checked AutoRuns, a program that lists virtually every program that starts up when Windows starts and disabled all the Comodo items. Then I rebooted into normal mode and everything ran correctly. I thought maybe cmdagent.exe was corrupted, so I uninstalled and reinstalled Comodo. That seemed to help the problem, although updating the anti-virus database for Comodo took quite a while. cmdagent.exe is the program that does the updating, so apparently there was something hanging up in the updating. Anyway, all is fine again now.

Actually my computer runs so smoothly with Windows XP SP3, I kind of enjoy in a strange way when something like that does go wrong and I get to do some troubleshooting. I think that was the first time in about 3 years I've had any kind of trouble. It's hard to understand folks who seem to have regular problems with their computers. I guess they just don't believe in preventative maintenance and maybe they don't check the air in their tires regularly or change oil regularly in their cars either. HI.

Oh, I heard from our N6A operator today and all 10 special event calls are set now for the sprint next Tuesday evening local time, and for all the operations the rest of anniversary week. See the N#A Operation page in the main section of the NAQCC web site to see when you can work one or all 10 of our SE calls and earn QSL's and/or a certificate.

Oh (again), I see on the STEREO image of the Sun on my propagation page that one of those cycle 24 sunspot areas looks like it is going to survive the trip around the sun and re-emerge on the visible surface of the Sun in a couple days, so maybe we'll have another period of the SF being in the 70's again. -30-

Tuesday, October 06, 2009 9:56 PM - I just signed up our first Cuban member to our NAQCC - Carlos CO8CML. That's our 80th country in the club now.

My streak QSO this evening was with Paul N4UEB. Paul is a long time diary reader and probably knows more about me from the diary than I remember or know myself. HI. It's always hard to believe how many people find what I write here in the diary so interesting, yet I'm sure they do from all the pertinent comments I get. It's not just saying they read the diary, but mentioning some little almost obscure thing that I talked about many entries ago.

For instance, Dennis WB8WTU emailed today and mentioned, "I was shocked and outraged to read in your diary that you gave up on wire antennas and QRP. You got me there for a minute...... very funny." referring to my April Fool joke in the diary. He also included some info about the 1340 that I will look into when I have the time. I've kind of put the 1340 on the back burner until after our NAQCC 5th anniversary celebration next week.

That is occupying a lot of my time. The latest thing is looking for a N6A operator for the sprint. The ham who signed up to operate N6A seems to have disappeared. I get no answer to my emails to him for whatever reason. Should you happen to be in CA and a NAQCC member reading this, email me if you'd be interested in operating N6A, especially in the sprint next Tuesday evening. I'd hate to have only 9 of our 10 special event calls represented in the sprint. -30-

Monday, October 05, 2009 10:46 PM - Those two cycle 24 sunspots that sent the SF into the 70's have now rotated off the visible surface of the sun. The SF is at 70 today and probably will be back in the 60's again starting tomorrow. However if those sunspots survive another rotation, we could get back into the 70's again in several days from now. You can watch their progress via the STEREO satellite pictures on my Propagation page. Those pictures show quite a bit, but not all, of the surface of the Sun hidden from view from Earth. There is about a 60 degree segment of the surface that the satellites don't yet cover. Those two sunspots are about to move into that area so figure roughly they will be out of view around 4 days since the sun rotates in about 28 days and 60 degrees is 1/6 of a rotation or 28/6 = 4 2/3 days if my late night tired brain math is correct. Then about 4 more days before they swing into view from Earth again if they survive. Just check my propagation page each day to follow their progress. If I remember correctly, the STEREO images are updated every 15 minutes or so. -30-

Sunday, October 04, 2009 10:39 PM - I had two nice rag chew QSO's this evening. Both with hams I've never worked before. That led me to a topic for tonight's entry.

Before I get to that however, I'd like to acknowledge a bit of feedback I received today. Larry W2LJ emailed and said in regards to my story about mirror grinding, "Did the same thing when I was in Junior High. Back in those days, the Edmund Scientific catalog was a permanent companion!"

Yep, that's where I got my mirror grinding kit along with several other scientific items from time to time.

With over 71,000 QSO's and with CW supposedly dying out, you'd think virtually every QSO I make nowadays would be with someone I worked before. Well, a lot of them are, of course. However quite a few every month turn out to be hams I haven't worked before. I believe that means that a lot of hams are either learning about the joy of CW or rediscovering that joy from their past. That's encouraging to me, as we need new blood in the CW ranks. It's just a shame that very few of these new hams I work are in their teens or even 20's. In fact very few are in their 30's and only a few in their 40's. If the profile trended toward younger hams, that would be even much more encouraging for the future of CW.

At any rate, here are the number of hams I worked for the first time in each of the past few months.

September    9
August      33
July        20
June        25
May         35
April       12

Long-term, I probably average 20 or so 'first-timers' each month. -30-

Saturday, October 03, 2009 9:22 PM - I like QSO's when the other person has something interesting to say beyond weather, rig, and the usual stuff. Sometimes though I just have time for such a quick QSO or an even quicker contest QSO to keep my streak going. I was going to do that with a CA QP contact this evening, but then I decided to try some CQ's on 80M and I worked Lynn NG9D. He was looking at my web site while we talked and mentioned he had a video on YouTube about grinding a mirror for a telescope after seeing I was interested in astronomy.

Well, that led me to a topic for this diary entry. Back in 7th grade at age 13 I built my own homebrew telescope which included grinding the mirror. That was a formidable time-consuming task. Nowadays mirror grinders either buy or jury-rig together some sort of grinding machine, but back then it was strictly manual labor for me.

I'll try to describe the procedure similarly to how I did it as a demonstration for a school assembly program way back then. However I had video aids then, namely the actual mirror grinding set-up. Here I have to do it with just words, and you'll have to use your imagination if you've never delved into mirror grinding.

You get two glass blanks, one the actual mirror and one the grinding tool. The tool is placed on top of a stand that you can walk around and securely fastened to prevent any movement. Different grades of grinding material is used, beginning with very coarse and ending with very fine. The material is put on the tool and water is added. Now you must use your imagination seriously. The mirror is slid back and forth across the tool while you walk around the stand and also rotate the mirror in your hands. This goes on for what seems like forever till you get a surface on the mirror that shows the entire area has been ground.

The object being to get a concave surface on the mirror that has the desired focal length. You check that roughly by wetting the surface and checking out the reflection of a candle. At a certain distance from the mirror, the reflection will change from a right side up image to an inverted one. At the changeover point, the reflection will simply appear as an image that fills the entire mirror surface with light. A measurement at that point from the candle to the mirror gives the focal length. If it is too long, which is what is desired actually, you continue on with the coarse grade of grinding material till you get just slightly longer than you want.

Then you continue on, but with the next finer grade of material. As you go, you keep on with the measurements and as you get closer and closer to the desired focal length, you keep using finer and finer material.

Finally when you reach the desired focal length, you invert the tool and mirror and grind a little more. This changes the surface from a spherical surface to that of a parabola.

With the tool back on the stand, a pitch lap is added and grooved by placing a rubber template on the pitch and pressing down on it with the mirror.

Now rouge is substituted for the grinding material and the mirror is polished to it's final surface ready to be silvered or aluminized (preferred). That was done by an outside source.

Keep in mind here that the above was done about 51 years ago now and I'm telling it strictly from memory, so don't go and use it as a set of instructions for mirror grinding, as I can only say it is a somewhat accurate description of the procedure.

Mounting the mirror in the scope tube along with the diagonal mirror, eyepiece holder and finder scope was a piece of cake compared to the grinding.

The tripod for the scope was built and welded by a friend of my dad's somewhere on his mail route.

Although I won prizes for it at our local school science fair and at the Buhl Planetarium, I'll be honest and say it never did work all that well and I never used it much at all. However it was quite a learning experience building it, and that was the real bottom line.

Tomorrow maybe I'll include some pictures of it and my awards. -30-

Friday, October 02, 2009 9:07 AM - It's a rather gloomy, soon to be rainy day in Kittanning. I guess I won't be outside much today unless the rain stops before dark and I take my poles to the river.

Maybe I'll see what the bands are like during the day. It might be interesting to see if the 13 straight days of the SF being above 70 have done anything to the higher bands. I haven't noticed much change in the evenings which of late is about the only time of day I get on the bands.

Thanks to Paul N0NBD for a couple suggestions about my Ten Tec 1340. I probably won't be working on it much for the next couple weeks because of all the work involved in our NAQCC 5th anniversary celebration. I did determine that the VFO sounds horrible on my 480 although it looks good on the scope, so there is definitely something wrong there.

I've just been looking at my web site stats which is something I do daily. I'm seeing a pickup in visitors again after the forced change of URL by Windstream back in March of this year. You can see that clearly in this graph which shows 7 day running average visits (blue), 30 day running average visits (red), and long term average since the site got started (green).

Notice the comeback which started in July after languishing for about 4 months. Of course the sudden drop-off at the end is because no data have been entered for those days yet. I like to see the numbers higher not for any personal satisfaction, but because it means more folks are interested in CW and QRP and want to know more about it. That's what my site is all about. It's very rewarding to hear from a visitor that my site inspired them to get back to CW and/or give QRP a try.

You will also notice if you look carefully there is a drop in visitors almost every year that starts around March and continues until September or so. Probably because it is spring and summer with the attendant good weather in the Northern hemisphere which is where the majority of my visitors live. That contributed to the URL change to enhance the big dropoff this year.

Finally I figure in about 60-65 days, the number of visits overall will reach the half-million mark. Perhaps we'll have a little contest to guess just what day that mark will be reached. -30-

Thursday, October 01, 2009 7:19 PM - I did my usual first of month financial stuff first thing this morning. Had my brunch. Helped Ange pick some figs and clean up chestnut burrs. Went fishing - caught a Sandpike and a Sucker to bring the total to 116 this year. Had supper. Did some shopping. Did a little yard work. Went over and played with Joe for a while. Back over home for some routing housework. Just finished putting my September weather data into the computer and printing out the results.

September continued the great number of below normal temperature months of late. It averaged 0.4 degrees below normal with the daily high averaging 1.7 degrees below normal. The daily low averaged 0.8 degrees above normal. A couple of monthly records were tied or broken. The range of temperature between the monthly maximum and minimum was just 40 degrees, the narrowest range since my record keeping started in 1959. Normally the range is 51 degrees with the highest being 61 degrees 3 times (1964,1983,1991). The monthly low of 44 tied the highest monthly low set in 1980 and 2008.

The only daily records of the 330 I keep track of in a 30 day month were 3 least daily temperature range records. 6 on the 7th and 26th, and 4 on the 29th. -30-