I did mean to resume my early morning exercise and CW practice regime at the start of term. The alarm has been set at 6am for every work day since then (much to Marianne’s irritation) but as of last Friday, I had failed to feel sufficiently conscious at that unearthly hour.
Today however, I was awake and mulling things over at 5.30am. I got up just before the alarm would have gone off, had a bite to eat and set off for The Cloud.
Given my early start, I was disappointed in my eventual QRV time of 0617z. This was due to a slow and undisclipined effort in completing the tasks required between bed and car. Room for improvement here.
The going was slow on 7.032MHz CW, with just two SMs, an F and an OE worked in 25 mnutes of calling. At one point I had to vacate 7.032MHz as two conversing French stations came up and took over. I tried calling on 7.030MHz but didn’t get a reply. I thought about sending a spot for the QRG change, but figured that action would rob 3 of my remaining 5 available minutes. Hence decided it would be better to continue to call, even with no reply.
Again, my pack-up and descent was slower than I know it should be, and driving away from Cloudside at 8.02am was a bit on the late side. At least the roadworks were finished (for now) and the Pittshill by-pass open, so getting to work was a bit quicker than last year.
Made morning briefing on time, then disappeared into a cupboard to throw the suit/collar/tie/shoes on, and got on with the day job. I’ll do it again tomorrow! 80m though, I’ll stick to my formula of switching between 40m and 80m whenever one of them doesn’t yield a big bag of QSOs. Therefore there might be some SSB tomorrow.
Tom M1EYP