I decided to work only with my Funster Plus rig - which constrained me to 40 metres. The nearly-new FT 817 and the HW-7 offer opportunities to work different bands, but I stuck obstinately with my homebrew-only rule. If I'm honest, I see the whole QRP philosophy as only being truly fulfilled in an h/b context. I realize that is a luxury which is only open to those who brew their own - and I don't demean those whose enjoyment is served up by commercial rigs - but that's the way I like it!
I ought to confess that other distractions, including the entirely welcome distractions of celebration with friends and family and playing with the nice effects processor which Santa (aka the XYL) gave me to run with my Fender Rhodes Piano (shown here to break the visual monotony of an otherwise text-only blog),
kept me out of the shack over much of the last week, so I didn't put in the hours required to deserve a better outcome.
I had very few genuine two-way QRP QSOs, spending most of my time in very pleasant conversations with German operators with 50+ Watts. My best true "Winter Sports" hook-up was with Guenter, dl2ny, but even that was plagued by the qsb and qrm that marred most of the rest of last year's (sounds so long ago, but it was only yesterday's) experience of our qrp mini-festival on 7 MHz for me.
Perhaps this year I'll be bold enough to venture out onto some other bands for Winter Sports - that might mean modifying the Funster Plus, accepting the rock-bound constraints of the Paraset or, perhaps, building a new rig.
Hmmmm... building a new rig... could that be the basis of a New Year's Resolution?
Health and Happiness to all readers for 2011,
...-.- de m0xpd
Happy New Year, and fine business on the resolution of building a new rig. While not a 'from scratch' home brewer like you, I have several kits sitting on the shelf that have declared themselves as part of my 2011 amateur radio resolutions. 73 phil
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