Hi!

Thanks to those who were up at the early (for us here on the west coast) hour for those passes on AO-51 and AO-7 this morning. I started out on AO-51 just after 1100 UTC from the AMSAT Symposium site in San Jose (grid CM97bi). After working that pass, I drove south to Santa Cruz, a small city on the Pacific coast where part of the city lies in the rarely-heard grid CM86. I worked 3 stations on the AO-7 pass around 1228 UTC, talked to myself on the AO-51 pass that came just after AO-7, then drove back to San Jose. Then I worked a couple stations on AO-7 around 1430 UTC, followed by one quick chat on VO-52 around 1630 UTC. Thanks for the QSOs this morning, and those from the past two days I have been in San Jose. Along with the little bit of radio activity, the AMSAT Symposium has been fun.

Since I know that there are at least a few who would like to work grid CM86, and I have a bit of free time before I fly home Sunday evening, I will make a return trip to Santa Cruz and work a pair of AO-27 passes in the late morning and early afternoon (around 1938 and 2114 UTC - the repeater will start a couple of minutes after those predicted AOS times). I know that I am near grid boundaries down there in Santa Cruz, but I am confining my plans to just CM86. I, or someone else, can work from CM96 or CM87 some other time.

As I have been making QSOs from here, I am uploading them to the Logbook of the World system. It has been swamped with uploads from last weekend's CQ WW SSB contest, so it has been taking a little while for the QSOs - and any QSLs - to show up in there. If you'd like a QSL card for a QSO with me from San Jose and/or Santa Cruz, please e-mail me with the QSO details. If you're in my log, I will send out a card.

73!

Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK http://www.wd9ewk.net/