Over the course of the New Year rollover here in Beaverton, I had the opportunity to operate SKCC special event station K3Y/7, which celebrates the 3rd anniversary of the manual key operation group. I had a great time operating, but I found the band conditions to be challenging. In the course of 4 hours (probably 3 hours of actual operating time), I only made 9 complete QSOs. The QSB was brutal tonight; I missed completing QSOs with a fair number of stations because of it. If I couldn’t hear you better than 559 on the peaks, I had a very tough time getting all of the required information.

My favorite QSO had to be the one with WA6NPC. He proudly told me his key was strapped to the arm of his rocking chair and he was rocking chair mobile. He was also quite prepared for the holidays with an ample supply of fruitcake. FB Bill!

I don’t know why, but I got some real jittery nerves on the key tonight. I was receiving OK, but had moments when I was transmitting when my brain just stopped converting text to Morse Code. How embarrassing. My apologies to anyone who had to suffer through that. I will have the callsign for at least two more operating periods (3 Jan 2200-2359 UTC and 10 Jan 0400-0559 UTC), so I hope to have a better QSO rate in my next attempts. Thanks to everyone who worked me, I hope you all had a great Straight Key Night.