I logged a couple quickies tonight, but best of all, I got back on SSB and received some good signal reports in the process.

As it’s been for me the last few weeks, 20 meters was very dead, save for the big signal of  James, KH2RU/KP4, operating out of Puerto Rico. He was +20 over S9, so I figured I might have good propagation to his QTH. I tossed my call out once and he came back to me immediately with 59+. Nice to have another PR station in the books.

I tuned around on 40 meters and happened to stumble across N0D (“Now Zero Days”), a special event station celebrating Doomsday. The operator’s grim humor was right up my alley. He advised I send my QSL card very soon, as it’s “probably the last QSL card you’ll receive before the World ends.” Heheh!

I switched on the FT-817 and started CQing with JT65 on 40 meters. It took me a few tries before anyone came back to me, but I ended up logging Jerry, WB4SIA, with a fair signal out of Minnesota. I was running 2.5 watts to my dipole and he indicated he was using 5 watts of power into a doublet antenna on his final exchange.