William Colston Albrant, Architect - Fargo, ND

I thought it was about time to offer a little tribute to the original William Colston Albrant. He died at age 35, just two months before his only child, William C. Albrant II, was born.

He was a well-known architect in and around Fargo, ND, and designed some major buildings, including Minard Hall, North Dakota State University, the Robb Lawrence Building, Union Block, Putnam Hall, Mayville Public Library, several churches and schools, and numerous other buildings, many of which are still standing today!

Here's a link to some photos and documents that might be of interest:

http://s205.photobucket.com/albums/bb270/k6cu/WC%20Albrant/#!cpZZ1QQtppZZ20

Found my antenna!

This week we cut down ALL the bushes along the north side fence. Not only does this make things look a little different, but now my HF6-V vertical antenna is more exposed and not surrounded by Honeysuckle plants.

In the picture at right, you can just see the vertical antenna between the two palm trees.

It didn't happen without problems. After doing some work on the coax, and adding two more radials, the antenna just didn't work right. I made several adjustments with no success.

Finally I found the "ground" connection from the coax to the antenna had broken, effectively turning my vertical into a piece of tubing at the end of a wire. A quick fix with the soldering iron and it works as good as new!

The Santa Rosa Plateau...

Today Robbin and I finally visited the Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Preserve. It's only 4 miles from our home, but in the 12 years we've lived here we haven't visited :)

It's over 9,000 acres. In late spring (after we get some solid rain) several large "vernal" pools form. A unique shrimp, found only in this area, hatches during this time. Perhaps we'll go back and watch the action!

The trails are well maintained, and there are many of them, so seasoned hikers can spend all day (from sunup to sundown) and still not see it all. After Santa Rosa we took the back roads to Temecula, then south to Fallbrook for lunch and shopping. With weather in the 80's, it was a beautiful day indeed.

DXCC Honor Roll Sticker

It may not look like much, but this little sticker is valuable -- at least to ham radio operators. Today I received the much coveted DXCC Honor Roll sticker, confirming that I've worked 331 entities (countries). They offer a nice bronze plaque, but it has a $60 price tag, and guess I'm too cheap to buy it!

There are several hundred hams (out of over a million) who have reached Honor Roll status. Many of them have large antenna systems, and amplifiers, and make Honor Roll in a matter of a decade or so.

My station is only 100 watts with a small vertical antenna so the effort took a little longer -- 50 years to be exact. In reality, I only started "chasing" the DXCC award when I got back on the air in 1985.

DXCC Honor Roll... Finally!

Just received an email from the ARRL DXCC desk, confirming that I've finally made the DXCC Honor Roll, with 331 current entities (countries) confirmed!

This is a life-long effort in my ham radio career that started over 50 years ago! So, if you don't mind, I'm going to give myself a big pat on the back!

The chart above shows Total 339 and Current 331 (some countries/entities have been deleted over the years). The screen capture shows the email from ARRL confirming my award.

The New Look...

Using the miracle of PhotoShop, the K6CU Blog page has been updated. It also makes the page load much faster than the old design.

Let me know what you think... good? bad?

By the way, this is the same photo that ran in QST magazine, February 2012 issue.

DX Contest A Success!

Last weekend I participated in the ARRL DX Contest. This is a contest where stations in the USA try to work as many foreign stations as possible. I enter this annual contest almost every year as a casual operator, and not as a competitive station. My only goal is to try and improve on my previous scores.

The 2012 contest score was the best ever, with 362 contacts and 186,792 points. That's almost double my score last year of 95,066 points!

Some of the more interesting countries I contacted include Madeira Island, Ascension Island, Senegal, Antarctica, Surinam, Aland Island, Svalbard, Palau, plus numerous countries in Europe, South America, Asia, Africa and the Pacific.

The contest lasts 48 hours, but I only actually operated for about 20 hours.

All the logging is done with a computer program called WinTest, which saves a whole lot of time, plus it prevents working "duplicate" contacts, which can lower your score.