CQWW Contest October 28 and October 29, 2017

For the home station at W9SUN it wasn't the best of contests since I was a bit rusty and didn't exactly have any sort of decent antenna that allowed me to work all of the stations that I was hearing. See, having a bit of a bout with foot problems over the last 2 plus months and a nice short hospital stay along with bed rest and being told to stay off the foot pretty much prevented any substantial plans to put together a small aluminum dipole or rotatable dipole antenna. Being told by the doctor that staying off the foot is the best plan is very good advice especially after 2 foot surgeries and another later surgery to correct any of the issues that existed after the first two rounds over a 3 day period. Add in the usual other health issues that seem to pop up now and then and I said, its much more important to make sure my health is better than worry too much about Amateur Radio. Which is something that I've been doing now for 17 years and thoroughly enjoy to the max. That being said, its much better now with the foot issues and on the way to some level of recovery although I am not sure it will ever be perfect in the sense of having a perfectly great foot especially with type II diabetes and all of the issues that I have dealt with for several years now. It would have been nice to get competent and quality medical assistance in the years 2013 to 2017 until my latest bout in the sick bed. Instead of being farmed around to various doctors and hospitals in the medical system which in my opinion left quite a bit to be desired. Doing what you are supposed to and then listening to doctors tell you various things all the while your condition does not get any better is utterly maddening. After some 4 years of fighting this foot issue and all the problems with it, we might be at least now getting solutions of which I have had excellent care from the podiatrist and his staff which I didn't receive in other areas and with other doctors. Somehow, that was repeatedly my fault that they didn't have the answers that should have been readily available with a little bit of research and care. Rather than being farmed out to various hospitals, MRIs, scans, etc. Its insane how inefficient and crazily ran the healthcare system truly is especially when you have to about 8 different people until someone actually looks at the problem and figures out that this can be fixed. So in that sense, I haven't been hitting the ham bands as much as I would have liked over the last 6 months or so considering that it could be considered an occupation or more like an obsession. The fact that sunspot levels have been in decline for the last year or so has probably had to do with some waning of my interest. Kind of difficult to scream your lungs out on 10, 12, and even 15 meters at times with very little results even in the early afternoon and late afternoon peaks of the band here in the Ohio River Valley. However, I have been in the process of upgrading the station in adding a relatively new smaller Behringer mixer, BBE Maxcom Dual Compressor for audio clarity and sound enhancement, etc. Some of my other little fun purchases was visiting my local area Guitar Center and adding to the Microphones used here at the shack. Especially with the sales that they've been having occasionally on Sterling microphones such as the ST51, ST55 and other condenser microphones. As well as adding a Behringer C-1, Heil mics, and my favorite purchase the Heil headset that I seem to be using more and more with the TS-480SAT as well as the Yaesu FT 450. I haven't put many QSL cards up on this site recently due to being piled on with other commitments and things that have been going on. Spending a couple days of week at the podiatrists office takes a pretty good chunk of time and catching up on dealing with insurance, medical concerns, health care, etc. I intend on adding a whole mess of cards pretty soon and plan on doing more HF here in the late fall and winter while on the mend. The station hasn't changed much over the past few months minus the audio gear added and the new Heil headset that didn't get much use from April to October. That said, operating conditions here has been the Kenwood TS 480 SAT, a long wire antenna fed into the tuner along with the JPS Noise Blanker as well as an MFJ 1026 I picked up this spring. Which does pretty good in getting out the trash on the bands and what can be locally heard from local radio as well as power lines and other noisy violators of the radio bands. That said, I look forward to spending more time on this blog and putting out more information