Update November 4, 2019: The contest is over and Eliot is pleased with his performance. He came up a bit short of the ‘clean sweep’ – garnering a contact in every ARRL section. He missed two Canadian sections – Northwest Territories and Manitoba.
Eliot Mayer W1MJ is a friend of almost 50 years. We met in the early 1970s when we were kids in our teens getting started in ham radio. There was a large crew of young, local hams at that time. It was a great social scene and it exposed us to interesting technology . . . leading to technical careers for many of us.
Eliot has always enjoyed CW (Morse Code) and casual contesting. ARRL Sweepstakes is the perfect mix of CW and contesting. It’s one of the oldest amateur radio competitions, dating back to 1927. For the last few years, Eliot has been quietly asking if he might be able to use my station for Sweepstakes. Finally, we made it happen. Eliot is here now, operating in the QRP category, Unassisted. That means he will keep his transmitter output power limited to five watts, or less, and he will not use internet assistance to locate stations to contact. Eliot has chosen to use our club call sign – NN1AA – for this effort. He likes the sound of the call sign in Morse Code.
At this point in the contest, Eliot has made about 150 contacts across the United States and Canada. And, he’s having fun. The video in this post is a snippet from his activity this evening on the 40 meter band. He contacts two stations – W0PV in Florida and K3IE in Tennessee. Pretty good for just a few watts of transmitter power!
With just a couple of hours remaining before the contest ends, Eliot was looking for a station in Vermont – the last of the 50 states to contact for the complete set! He finds Mitch W1SJ on the 80 meter frequency band.
Jim is a technologist, an innovator and a business builder. He most enjoys helping teams take on big challenges to achieve big goals.
