Gas-&-Go 10K, with a side of Ham Radio

17 February 2025

Part of my reasoning for not getting on the air in the morning on my day off today, on Presidents’ Day, was due to the fact that several people and I put together a 10 K race. It was scheduled for the morning, but due to a work conflict we needed to push it to the afternoon. We get aircraft that zip in and out of Wake in a brief “Gas-&-Go” capacity so I thought that naming our inaugural race down one of our taxiways, out to our marina, and back in a loop, rather fitting.

This was a friendly competition, but I am definitely competitive with myself so I wanted to see how well I could do. I’d call myself an active “runner” as of about 2 years ago. Since then, I’ve run one marathon, a couple half marathons, and one unofficial half marathon here on Wake Island. I am of the age where I figure if I don’t use it, I will lose it, so trying to stay fit is a top priority. Mental acuity is also on the forefront of my mind as I believe it is important to keep your mind engaged with new challenges. CW is a great mental challenge as it is akin to learning a new language. If you are thinking about learning Morse code, I just encourage you to dive in. It takes practice but it is worth it. I have really come to enjoy my brief CW exchanges while participating in Summits On The Air. That arena allowed me the opportunity to practice with routine exchanges and in a community of supportive CW operators.

That brings me to going live with CW here on Wake Island after much consternation from dealing with some big pile ups on SSB. My mild fear of jumping into the metaphorical deep end of the CW pool has been put aside somewhat as I have become more comfortable working split. That allows me the flexibility to find stations better across a few kilohertz of bandwidth. With hope and optimism for favorable band conditions I set up for 12m not too long after dinner. I checked the SWR on my antenna and it was happy at 1.02:1. Immediately I had a pile up after a quick QSO with Oiva, OH2NSM, and away it went better than expected. This was a much slower pace making contacts that I am used to on SSB but it was enjoyable. 71 QSOs in two hours. The band really started to close by 0930z. I was also unaware V73WW was also in the mix of frequencies or I would have QSY’d. I neglected to check on my transmit frequency while I was white-knuckling my key and shooing away bugs while trying to log CW contacts. I’ll do better on that next time around. All in all, it was a good day on the track and on the radio.

In case you were wondering, 10K completed in 51 minutes, 33 seconds. Not too shabby if I do say so myself. 73, Allen