Project TouCans at the ARRL Sweepstakes

I did not think Project TouCans would make a single QSO in the ARRL Sweepstakes. I was wrong.

When all was said and done, the little rig housed in the dipole in our backyard in San Francisco made 17 QSOs whilel working the contest for about three and a quarter hours. One of the QSOs was even to New Hampshire, one of the dwindling number of states the gang and I haven't contacted yet!

The rig did great, lots of people were able to hear it. The thing that struck me as being really, really nice of everyone was that while I don't think calling /6QRP made anyone any more interested in calling, it did seem to open up a space on the QRP frequencies. The screenshot below shows the hole that Project TouCan's two available frequencies, 14057.5 and 14058 kHz, fit right into.

I used the Utah SDR as a waterfall display for the Project TouCans receiver. It's a RockMite which means that it's really, really wide, and, of course, there were a lot of really loud stations to either side. When I thought someone was calling back, I'd glance at the waterfall to see if the latest huge-ish blip was on the CQ frequency of the RockMite. If so, I'd try to respond.

I really was shocked by the whole thing. It was really pleasant. I'd been led to believe that because we have a QRP station, contests would just not be a thing, but they are!

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