I had my main Ham computer go down last week. It's a "Shuttle" and I think the main board went south. Over all I have been quite satisfied with the performance of the computer for my Flex radios, so I am in the process of upgrading to a new wiz bang version of the Shuttle with a quad core intel processor and a scad of memory etc etc. In hte mean time I am using an old AMD dual core computer that I have been using as my Linux box. I added Windows to hold me over until the new fire breather is on-line
In the mean time the bands have been really looking up here in Florida. There still is considerable storm static I suspect out in the ocean, but especially on 40M things have been hot especially into the Indian Ocean and Oceania. Last night Madagascar and Saudi and Austral Islands and this morning Mauritius all of them Q5 and second or third call.
The F5K is invaluable in picking the spot to make the call and determining the pattern. This morning the 3B8 was starting at the bottom of the pileup and working his way to the top picking out half a dozen stations along the way and then returning to the bottom to do the pattern all over again. It was simply a matter of putting myself into a "quiet" 300hz window and blasting away. If he passed me I would move up a khz to another clear spot etc etc. With out the F5K and Skimmer figuring out this pattern would have been impossible
Way too much fun!!!!
73 W9OY
