Last night, after a happy hour with some friends, I came home and switched on my IC-705 and browsed to the POTA spots page, filtering on CW only.
I noticed there were a few people doing POTA at this late hour (0300 UTC). I tuned to 40 meters and listened to KJ4ASE work his pile-up. After most of it was over, I threw out my call – badly.
He came back and after a few attempts at my sloppy CW, my first CW QSO was in the log!
Then I spun the dial and had my 2nd CW QSO with N5NU. I threw out my call, thinking I was a little smoother but in my excitement, I was unable to smoothly send on my amazing Bencher paddle. We got through the QSO and I had my 2nd one in the books!
Later, I noticed KJ4ASE had QSY’d to 20 meters. It was past 10 PM! You gotta love Cycle 25. 10PM and 20 meters is still open. I’m not sure of the POTA rules on working the same person multiple times at 1 park on multiple bands. I jumped out of bed and made a quick QSO with him again, this time a little smoother in the process.
Luckily, or to my embarrassment, my IC-705 recorded all of this. It was painful to hear – probably like I was playing my guitar for the very first time to Black Sabbath, at the age of 12.
This morning, without expecting anything in return, I filled out paper QSL cards and will be dropping them in the mail.
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