6m propagation came back on time this year. First big event took place in May 2 with sort path opening with prefixes as 4Z, 9A DL. Yesterday we had a wider one with calls like CT3, EA and so one. Magic band has good mood this year. Take a look in yesterday opening as it was observed in real time by DX- Sherlock.
By the way this a good tool watching the sporadic E openings. You will find it following the link: http://www.vhfdx.net
We spent a few days to the cottage to say welcome to spring. Things turned out to be quite different than expected. Spring did not came on time. It was very wet and looked like more as winder. Even the fireplace was acceptable!
The plants, as you can see, were not prepared for such a weather but I remained cool and relaxed. I do not know, nobody knows actually, if there is any correlation with the prolonged sun minimum. By the way the signals were not too bad in my portable wire antennas. So no reason to complain at all. It was a nice break anyway.
The sun continues its leisure. It behaves exactly as the stoke market: When you believe that it has got a minimum it is going lower. We had great expectations for VK9LA but it turned out to be difficult to get heard. At least to Europe. Under such hostile 
I love their shack inside the little tent and their high tech illumination system, hi hi. By any means it is the more likable dxpedition of the year. Congratulations guys. This is a real ham spirit!
Photos taken from their site:http://www.vk9gmw.com/
Update 23-03-20009: The European gang landed safely to SYD. Tomorrow they will fly to Lord Howe. Let show begin! (Photo taken from their blog)
This is the sort path to VK9LA from my QTH. I am speaking about the Lord Howe expedition that will take off next week.This island looks like a dreamy paradise on earth.
Although I have this entity already confirmed, I will try to work them in any possible band. The expedition seems to be very well organized and it has a great interest for Greek hams because of the participation of Vicky (SV2KBS). We 
Strong enough but tiny and flexible. This the description of the new trend in desktop PC. I was very tempted to see the result. I was always attracted to small configurations. That is why I got The EeePC of ASUS. But this is an other thing: to build a small PC all yourself choosing parts and put it together. Dennis (SV8RV) showed me the way. We discussed a lot and I made up my mind. I chose the well known tiny ITX mobo of INTEL D945GCLF2. This little thing has the ATOM 330 CPU (dual core) already installed and audio and graphics subsystems as well. Important: serial port, parallel port, 6 USB ports and 1GBit Ethernet are included.
For the case I found attractive the proposition of MOREX 3310. Take a look how nice it looks. And also quite practical. It needs only 13.8V to work. This a voltage that is very popular to hams. All power supplies have it and our cars also.
All the voltages are produced from the internal power supply. No fun need. The total power does not exceed the 50W.
You have to attach a HDD drive of 2.5 inches and a RAM of one GB you and the PC is ready to service. As operating system is better to prefer windows XP or LINUX because are light and reliable. You can even boot from a sick USB whatever operating system you want. The result is really a beauty. Especially if you need a dedicated PC for digital operation that will perform perfectly without claiming a lot of space on your desk. Have in mind that it also perfect for portable operations and its cost just 200$.
Here is the toy finished, which I can not hide, I am proud of. You look its back next to my microphone for realizing size. Admire the connectivity plurality.
It is very common and it happens in every shack sooner or later: a meter gets dark unexpectedly. It is very annoying when it strikes. The good old ones lamps have a period of life. Unfortunately they can not work for ever. Usually their life is quite sorter than the equipment that the meter is embedded. No big deal you can say. Just change the bulb. It is obvious. We all do this from time to time. My friend Tasos (SV8YM) had an other idea instead: To use a bright LED in the place of a bulb. LEDs can give a cold light for many years without any sign of fatigue. But there is a small problem. Their light is focused because of the lens they have. You have to sand the led to eliminate this effect. You must destroy completely the lens and leave the LED with a rough surface in order to defuse more light. You must also add a resistor of 470 Ohm in order to reduce the voltage from 13.8V to what the LED usually needs that is quite lower. 
I made 870 qso last weekend.This is a small score for such a big test as CQ WPX RTTY. Thousands of participants for all around the world. I met guys that gave me numbers more than 2000. Such big event is not just fun. It is an experience. Even with low propagation conditions I worked a long list of dx stations. Take a look: YN2S, P49X, ET3AA, NP3U, 6K5AQY, XW1B, D4C, 9M2MT, DV1JM, PZ5RA, HI3TEJ, FM5CD and FG1PP. In the end, just an hour before closing, I had a nice surprise. A long skip appeared in 80m that let work a few multies from NA and Caribbean.
In the meantime K5D is alive. A task finished, an other starts. ..and I said to myself what a wonderful world! We never bore.
