March 14th Pi Day special event is over! With a half dozen operating stations we sent out pi day greetings to stations across the country and Europe and South America!
Don on SSB, Ben on CW, John on FT8/FT4 on 10 &15, and Jeff, Adam, Walt, Fran, Rebecca at Charlie’s (photos from Charlie’s)
Don is now assembling the contacts and uploading them to LOTW, etc.
Soapbox
Well, PI Day 2025 is in the logs. I did not get China but I had 176 contacts on 20m and another 95 on 40m for a total of 271. How did everyone else do? –Don, AK2S
I got 22 QSOs on FT8, 3 on 20m and the rest on 15m. It was my first time working 15m and my first ever contact in South America (Brazil)! Earlier in the day I made roughly a dozen contacts on 40m voice in Charlie’s shack. Jeff was logging those. I also made a contact from the other direction. While Rebecca was taking 2m contacts on the repeater I walked out to the sidewalk in front of Charlie’s house and contacted her. Thanks again to Charlie for hosting us and for the delicious apple pie, and for Rebecca for bringing us pizza. — Walt KC3WHU
I tried spotting myself via dxwatch.com a couple times … probably made a difference, but not an abundance, and not for very long. I found that when spotting on dxwatch, the comments must be different from prior times in order for the request to go through.
Just got a call from Ecuador! I called it quits at 9pm … no pileup … bummer! The China Q was indeed my last one, and it was so weird, I couldn’t even believe it was happening, but it sounded right (polar warble), with good timing relative to my transmissions, and he used our callsign in his exchange … must be real! … Few worries about stepping on other stations’ toes when running QRP! 😉 In the meantime, I got a lot of practice calling CQ and handling exchanges with the bug (Vibroplex mechanical keyer) … getting better!Happy Pi Day! — Ben, AC2YD —
A shout out goes to Charlie, N2CTW, for hosting us at his “shack in a garage” during the Pi Day N3P special event station operation. I appreciated the opportunity to refresh my HF operating chops while having fun at the same time! All my QSOs were on 40 SSB with the logging help of Walt, KC3WHU and Charlie. For self-imposed training purposes, I completed the last four or five contacts while doing my own logging into the computer.I also enjoyed the eyeball-QSO company of Fran, N2FXO in between operating sessions. — 73, Jeff W2JJJ
Sounds like this might have been our best Pi day ever, with lots of US and International contacts! Thanks to all for participating and Charlie D. for hosting. Picked up Pizza Pi at one of my long-time Lawrenceville faves (Varsity Pizza) on my way to Kingston. — Rebecca K3RPM