Springlike weather coaxed eight hams out of their shacks for the weekly breakfast and kaffeeklatsch at Virlie’s Restaurant in Pittsboro this past Saturday. If Spring was in the air, so were tales of LDE’s (Long Delayed Echoes). Nick, KA1HPM and John, KX4P were in a roundtable on 75 meters when they experienced delays of around 1 second on the signals of several of the participants. The phenomenon lasted for about thirty seconds per occurrence. One of the most popular extant theories is that signals are trapped between two ionized layers and are guided around the world several times before falling out of a hole in the bottom layer.

Roy, WA2JLW, loaded up some N1MM contest software and enjoyed playing in the ARRL DX CW contest the previous weekend.

Terry, KK4JGT, has organized our first emergency communications coverage test for Chatham County this Monday evening on the OCRA 440 repeater which the OCRA crew has generously allowed us to use during emergencies and training. Terry also described his copper pipe dual band J pole.

Bill, N8BR, had a motherboard crash, but retrieved the hard drive intact. He is working on also retrieving his old log files from that drive.

Dave, W4INN, is getting into the swing of spring by planning to do some gardening.

Pete, K4PHS, brought his newly constructed 30 meter WSPR beacon. Transmitting with 1 watt and a dipole in the attic, it has been received in Europe and Antarctica.

Herb, N4HA, hopes he’ll figure out how to program his new HT before the repeater test Monday evening.

Please join us for radio fun Saturday mornings at Virlie’s Restaurant in Pittsboro around 8:30 AM.

Herb, N4HA