This streak continues
Looks like this is the 6th week in a row I have maed this blog / vlog. It is really helping me stick to my practice with CW and my goal of being proficient enough to activate a SOTA or POTA by the end of June 2024.
Strange SOTA
This weekend I made a fairly unusual SOTA activation where the summit is on private land, but a road goes through the activation zone. So one can activate from the road's right of way. Not really in "the spirit of SOTA" one could argue, but with so few SOTA options near me, you do what you can.
The highlight of the activation was a QSO with Paula K9IR. If you do any research on SOTA summits in Wisconsin, you will recognize the call sign. K9IR has activated most of the summit one can in this area and has left some wonderful directions and tips on finding some of the summits. She has been my virtual SOTA guide, and I had the opportunity to thank her.
To make a strange activation a little more strange K9IR was using a remote station that was located just a few miles from where I was activating. So it was a 15 meter groundwave SOTA contact.
Took a break from CW practicing but I didn't seem to lose much ground
Not too long ago I was talking about routines and it may be okay for me to miss a day, but never two in a row. That was a hack for me to get into and stick to a routine. Well, I didn't do that this past week... I did not do my morning CW copy practice all week. It happens, right?
However when I sat down to get back at it this weekend, I was surprised by how little I ground I lost. Using the Koch method I left off at lesson 15 of 40. I dove in cold and on my first one minute practice session I had 35% errors, which was a lot better than I expected!
After the ten minute practice session I was down to about 10% errors, right where I left off. After a week of no practice, I seemed to be close to the same level of competency. This makes me happy. It's starting to stick.