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Finally a few days off and some more time for radio. Conditions seemed fairly good on Thursday. The first one in the log was FK8CP Remi on 40M (#219) CW. Then I noticed XW1B was on RTTY on 20M, I was too late, but found VR2XMT Charlie instead and worked him for  a new one on RTTY (#172). Several years ago, I heard Charlie on 6M, but I couldn’t work him. Hopefully when 6M opens again for F2, he’ll get in my log. WH6R was CQ’ing with not too many takers on 40M CW. I got him after repeating my call several times. He was in for hours. Listen to him below. The last new one was YI9AJ on 40M (#220) CW.

On Friday XW1B was on again. This time on 40M RTTY (#173). He was easily worked, and had a BIG signal as usual. E21EJC was CQ’ing down on CW with a nice signal. I gave him a call and worked him easily. I decided I wanted to try a few calls, since band conditions seemed fairly good. The first to answer was K6KII Cliff. Quickly followed by 4 other California stations. The other stations worked were W6AUG, AE6RS, K6YK and W6FI. W6FI was the strongest signal and were peaking 599. I had a quick try on 30M and worked WS1F Bob again. I worked him on 17M back in 1999. W2MF Manny called in with a good signal. The last QSO in the log was F5BTT Pierre, who visited my homepage and left a message in my guestbook. You had a nice signal Pierre, and I hope to work you again on other bands.

Soundclips:

• FK8CP 40M CW – new on 40M
• YI9AJ 40M CW – new on 40M
• E21EJC 40M CW
• WH6R 40M CW
• W6FI 40M CW – Mike, QSB and lots of noise on the band

On LoTW I got another new one confirmed with UN7GCE. Total now is 197. Other nice ones confirmed are VK9CXJ, V26K, VP2EDL and JE6UWU who I worked on 30M last weekend.

A small report this time since I haven’t been on the radio for several days. On Sunday, I had a go on 30M. I called CQ and was spotted by ZL2IFB, thanks Gary. Band was open for some DX, and I got 15 JA’s in the log and one HL with HL3IB. I worked the following JA call areas: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9 and 0. Signals were quite strong, with some stations having QSB and echoes. With these openings, I have noticed that I hear something I believe are my own echoes coming back. When I run CW, I run full break-in, and I can listen in between my dots and dashes. I hear faint tones, so I guess they are my own signal coming back at me from somewhere. Kinda fun listening to it, but I couldn’t detect it on my own recording though.

Later in the day on Sunday, I worked C31CT for a new one on 30M (#237). He was running on 10.111, a frequency with heavy qrm, but luckily, I read him most of the time.

Here are the soundclips this time:

• EL2DX 30M CW
• C31CT 30M CW – notice the very noisy frequency on 10.111

And a few stations I picked out from the 42minute recording on 30M Sunday morning:

• JG3QZN 30M CW – Kazu
• JS6CQY 30M CW – Taka
• HL3IB 30M CW – Kim

I also uploaded my latest QSOes to LoTW. Three hits with the contacs on Sunday, SV1LK, IZ8EEL and JI2KTX. New countries confirmed lately are D4C and A43DLH. Now my total are 196 LoTW only.

I happened to surf by the ARRL awards and noticed a new LoTW only WAS award. It will be made available next year, and can only be applied via LoTW with contacs made after 0000Z January 1, 2009. In short terms, it means that you must have contacts with each of the 50 states on voice, CW  and digimodes. All bands (except 60M) can be used.  

Source: http://www.arrl.org/awards/

Not much DX  to write about this time. Too much other stuff to do lately, but managed 2 new ones with AP2TN on 40M (#218) and A71CW on 30M (#236). I also tried 4S7NE on 40M, but he didn’t copy me very well. He never got my call correctly, so I hope to get him some time later.

Soundclips:

• 4S7NE 40M CW – Nelson, worked him on 30M not long ago
• A71CW 30M CW
• AP2TN 40M CW

WordPress 2.7 was released yesterday. I have been running early builds on a testblog without any problems at all. I had in mind to upgrade this blog to 2.7 RC2, but when I finally had the time to do so, 2.7 was released! I had no problems with the update, but as always, disabling the plugins first before you are upgrading, is very wise. I didn’t disable Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu before the upgrade, so I had no left menu. It was easily fixed by accessing plugin.php and disabling it after the upgrade. I also got a pleasant surprise that Admin Drop Down Menu was upgraded for 2.7. Now I can continue to use my favorite plugin. NextGEN Gallery 1.0 was also released yesterday. All in all, I did a lot of upgrading and everything worked out without any problems.

Get the stuff here:

• WordPress 2.7
• Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu
• NextGEN Gallery

Quote from the release http://wordpress.org/development/2008/12/coltrane/ :

December 11, 2008
WordPress 2.7 “Coltrane”
By Matt. Filed under Development. 

The first thing you’ll notice about 2.7 is its new interface. From the top down, we’ve listened to your feedback and thought deeply about the design and the result is a WordPress that’s just plain faster. Nearly every task you do on your blog will take fewer clicks and be faster in 2.7 than it did in a previous version. (Download it now, or read on for more.)

Next you’ll begin to notice the new features subtly sprinkled through the new interface: the new dashboard that you can arrange with drag and drop to put the things most important to you on top, QuickPress, comment threading, paging, and the ability to reply to comments from your dashboard, the ability to install any plugin directly from WordPress.org with a single click, and sticky posts.

Digging in further you might notice that every screen is customizable. Let’s say you never care about author on your post listings — just click “Screen Options” and uncheck it and it’s instantly gone from the page. The same for any module on the dashboard or write screen. If your screen is narrow and the menu is taking up too much horizontal room, click the arrow to minimize it to be icon-only, and then go to the write page and drag and drop everything from the right column into the main one, so your posting area is full-screen. (For example I like hiding everything except categories, tags, and publish. I put categories and tags on the right, and publish under the post box.)