Last Surviving Crew Member of Kon-Tiki Expedition SK

Knut Magne Haugland the last surviving crew member of Kon-Tiki Expedition became a Silent Key December 25. Knut was also a member of the Norwegian Resistance during WWII and was one of the original Heroes of Telemark. ARRL has this article on their web today:

Last Surviving Crew Member of Kon-Tiki Expedition Passes Away

May You rest in peace.

Hospitalized

I was planning to do some cassual qrp operating during the Christmas but the plans were spoiled by the fact that I has been hospitalized since December 21th. Last Sunday I started to feel fever warm and the left side of my face, my upper left arm and the left side of my torso turned red and swollen. I went to see the doctor on Monday and he put me to bed in the hospitals intensive care unit where I spent the next two nights and days. I feel much better now and is home on leave for the weekend. I will return to the hospital tomorrow morning.

National Field Day 2006

Today I received a package by mail from the Norwegian Radio Relay League that I did not expect. The large box contained a cup with the following inscription:

NRRL
NFD 2006
LA1TPA
Vinner kl. 2

I vaguely remember that I won the QRP section of NRRLs National Field Day (NFD) in 2006. I guess I was the only QRP station that bother to deliver a log...

Night operation

Tonight when I looked at the NØHR.com Propfire Extension in Firefox I noticed that the Solar flux had reached 82! I wanted to check out the conditions so so I decided to visit the shack of my local radio club for some night operation.

I listened for a while on both 40m and 80m but could not hear a lot of stations. Before heading home I managed to work a french station on 80m and that is a new band country to me! He struggled a bit with my 5w QRP signal but eventually he was able to copy my callsign and my report.

Practical wireless

Last week I received the January 2010 issue of practical wireless. When I opened it I found that something went wrong in the printing process and some of the pages were unreadable.

Friday I e-mailed the editor Rob G3XFD/EI5IW and he kindly sent me a new copy and warned me that it could take some time due to the holiday season. Guess what! The new magazine dropped down in my letterbox today! Thanks Rob!

And by the way, the young man on the front page is Jimmy Read M3EYP on one of his sota activations. I met Jimmy and his father Tom M1EYP in October 2008 when I visited UK with Aage LA1ENA and Kjell LA1KHA.

Norwegian QRP net on 60m

The last two days I have checked in to the Norwegian QRP net on 60m at 11:00 utc. The net is controlled by Per-Olav LB1AF and the purpose of the net is to learn more about propagation on 5MHz.

Today I checked in as LA1TPA/P from Holtankollen, a local summit with SOTA reference LA/TM-049. I used my Yaesu FT-817ND, a 88ft doublet, the Elecraft T1 ATU and a switchable 4:1/1:1 balun from Elecraft.

QRG: 5.335 - 5.340 MHz

Hot Iron

The winter issue of Hot Iron, the journal of the Constructors Club dropped down in my letterbox today. Tim Walford G3PCJ of Walford Electronics releases 4 issues a year of this excellent newsletter.

You can join the construction club by sending £7 (£9 for overseas members) by PayPal to Tim with your name and address.

The 1B prefix

Yesterday I worked 1B1AB on 17m without recognizing his country prefix. When I later checked the call sign I found that the 1B prefix is used by the "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus", a country not recognized by UN or any other countries except Turkey. The 1B prefix is not recognized by ITU and does not count towards the DXCC award.

It seems to me that Soyer is only using the call sign given to him by his telecommunications authorities and that they are the ones to blame.

When I checked my eQSL account today I found a waiting QSL from Soyer with the Authenticity Guaranteed by eQSL. The country information shows Cyprus.

I'm pretty mixed up here and I'm not sure whether I should confirm the QSL or not.