NEAR-Fest failure on my part, COVID, New Radio !!

Yes, it has been awhile. A lot has happen in the past few months, not all good. 

NEAR-Fest:

The week before NEAR-Fest, my wife and I went for a three day vacation up to Vermont. We didn't realize how many people would be up there this year. They were wall to wall. Needless to say, we both got COVID. That ruined my plans to have a table for the SKCC at NEAR-Fest the next week. A couple of SKCC member tried to man the table in my stead, but without the banners not many people know who they were. Sorry for that guys. I hope to do better. However with the latest surge of COVID, I am not sure the NEAR-Fest will be on in the spring.

Thanks to Mark, NX1K and all the rest who help out.

COVID:

As I stated, my wife and I got COVID. I was pretty sick for about 10 days. My wife had somewhat milder symptoms. I am still have some problems with a lingering cough. The doctor did a x-ray and it showed my lungs have some scaring. I am going to have another x-ray next month to see if it has gotten any better. By the way, we are both vaccinated and wore mask when ever we went in side anywhere. So you can still get COVID even if you are vaccinated and take precautions. 

Do yourself a favor, DON'T GET COVID!! get vaccinated please. A Ham friend for mine and his wife didn't get vaccinated. They both got COVID and died. Very sad.

New Radio:

As my Christmas/birthday/Christmas/birthday gift from my wife for the next two years , I traded in my 6300 for a brand new 6400. Just got it yesterday and am having a ball with it.

My new Flex-6400

I trade my 6300 in for the 6400. So I was without my Flex for about 3 weeks. I had to send my 6300 back to Flex so they could check it out before they would finalize my purchase of the 6400. It took a week for shipping, another week for them to check out my 6300 and then another week to ship my 6400. So in the mean time, I set up my Kenwood TS-520S and used that for awhile.

I don't have an antenna tuner for the TS-520S, so before I setup the TS-520S, I checked my OCF antenna with my RigExpert antenna analyzer.

80, 40 and 20 meters seem to be OK to run without a tuner. 15 meters was a little iffy. Since the TS-520S has tube finals and I wasn't going to be doing a lot of 15M QSOs, I figured it would be OK for the short term, and it was.

Analysis of me 80-6M OCF 

While my 6300 was back at Flex, I was using my Kenwood TS-520S.

Operating:

I hit a couple of milestones recently. I finally got a 150 points for the 2xQRP award (still waiting for it to be approved) and also made Sx6. In general I have not been as active recently but hope the change that next month when the K3Y event is going on.

160-6M OCF:

Well this is on hold now. Because I was sick with COVID, I missed my opportunity to run some new lines to hang the antenna. I will try again in the spring (I hope). 

All for now. Thanks for dropping by es 73!!