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90 Day Goal: Failed

On January 9 I started Dr. McDougall’s 12-day program with my wife and aunt. After completion of the program on January 21 I had made further improvements on my blood numbers, as well as my weight loss. At the conclusion, I set another 3 month goal, to get my body weight down to 175 pounds. As of today, now April 22 I am still 8 pounds shy of my goal. All things considered, I am not upset with this. But as many had written about previous on the McDougall Discussion Boards, the last 10 pounds are the hardest. I am now experiencing that.

I have identified those areas causing the 8 pound discrepancy. Topping the list, my dedication to a cardio workout. An area that will probably provide more benefits and resolve some of my other issues. Next would be the intake of those “empty carbs” from beer. I have cut my alcohol consumption back, but is it enough? That has yet to be seen. Finally my eating habits need to stabilize. Right now, I struggle with getting a balance of good meals though out the day.

When I added cardio to my health plan, I had the intention of walking 20-30 minutes 4-5 days a week while on lunch break at work. Unfortunately I am not always able to get that walk in due to job priorities. When I get home from work, cardio is nearly non-existent. Although, my wife wants to start walking in the afternoon, so hopefully together we can start a walking regime before dinner. I would like to add spinning or an elliptical to the cardio, but right now that might not be a possibility.

The beer. Oh the beer, how do I love thee? This continues to be my vice that I am trying to remedy, but with summer on the horizon and temperatures warming up I am struggle to grab anything other than a cold one from the refrigerator when working around the yard. I have been able to cut back the amount I drink on a weekly basis, but I am not sure if that reduction is enough. The problem with the beer is I believe it’s keeping my triglycerides (208) high. Beer “reduces the amount of the enzyme that breaks down triglycerides and spurs the liver to make more triglycerides” (source). Currently my alcohol habit equates to just under 1 beer a day per week, which is usually a 6-pack on my days off from work.

Outside of breakfast, I really haven’t establish good eating habits. I do eat when I am hungry, but usually the amount of food I eat isn’t enough to satiate me, so I find myself hungry a bit later with nothing to eat. Rarely do I eat out any more when I am at work, which isn’t a problem. The problem starts when I get home from work and start eating that afternoon snack, followed by dinner usually less than 2 hours later. So it seems I am probably eating too much in a short window followed by going to bed not more than 90 minutes after dinner is over.

With those issue, the rate of weight loss has slowed. Over the past 2 months, I doubt my weight of 183 has varied by more than +/- 2 pounds, which is a positive sign. Again, I don’t have to count calories or track my food with this way of eating. I have been doing for other reasons, so I can refer back to see what I have eaten and what possibly culprits I could have in my diet, if the triglycerides do not end up dropping to a healthy level.

So why I didn’t meet my weight goal I am still carrying a very positive attitude and outlook forward. This 90 day goal was nothing more than a checkpoint to gauge how I was doing. While the weight is still 8 pounds shy of where I want to be, I can look back and see that I am 33 pounds lighter than I was this time last year. Pending the outcome of my MRI, my next goal will be set for late September, as I wrote about yesterday.

WPX on the Horizon

While May 26 is still a way out, it’s not too early to start planning for the CQ WPX CW contest. It’s one of those contests that I have really come to enjoy, next to the ARRL Sweepstakes. I find it interesting, now 3 years into contesting these two contests would top my list of “most enjoyable.” CW or Morse code wasn’t a mode I really thought of using when I upgraded without submitting to Element 1 testing, since it was dropped by the FCC. Sweepstakes, before participating, I could not understand the draw to the contest, but now 3 years later, these “messages” we exchange during the contest show the importance of traffic handling and being precise.

There is more to entering a contest than winning, especially for an operator like myself with a very modest shack and equipment compared to other stations. Unfortunately due to our remodel in 2011, I was unable to participate in the CQ WPX CW. Go back just 2 years and I posted one of my best overall performances in ANY contest to date. Again, I didn’t win the contest in my category (Single Operator, High Power, All Bands), while placing 19th out of 71 operators in that category.

The best part of this contest is that you get to work EVERYBODY! It’s also a contest where the other station’s prefix (like W6 or WD6, etc) are multipliers. If you work stations on the low bands (40/80M) they are worth double the points. If you work stations on other continents, they are worth more than if I work many domestic stations. So this is my best opportunity to score 1 million points in a contest.

John, K6MM and Dean, N6BV made a presentation back in 2010 at our May meeting of the Northern California Contest Club. After seeing the numbers as presented by K6MM and the outlook for propagation, even an operator like my could put up 1 million points. I had grand visions of that goal back in 2010, but sleep got the better of me when the sun went down. From that point on I was behind the goals I had set, unable to recover.

This year hopes to be a different story, especially if the solar weather picks up in the next month with an increase in sunspots. Regardless I will attempt to put a full weekend into contesting in order to achieve my 1 million point goal. Getting back to the band information, as long as I can stay awake, the low bands (40/80M) should be worth their points in gold. Even 6-8 hours when the sun goes does should provide me with the push I need to make 1 million points. The great think about this contest is I only need to make 27 contacts per hour and I will achieve my goal.

Currently I have working up the details on a spreadsheet I use for where my antenna will be pointing, possible contacts per band, broken down into different categories based on points. I also have to figure out a sleep schedule, which could be during the day, as opposed to night time when points are at a premium. Still some work to do before the contest arrives, but planning is always a key when it comes to contesting.

WPX SSB Goals

It’s interesting to look back and see when I started on HF a number of years ago, all I wanted to do was make contacts using SSB (voice). Now, this seems to be my least favorite mode, partially due to my station. Thankfully I can power on the Alpha 76PA amplifier and put out close to 1000 watts, but that usually results in some adverse effects around the house to the Internet router, phones, television or other electronics.

WPX SSB hasn’t been one of those contests I pay too much attention to. I have participated in the contest since 2009, improving my numbers every year. Last year I spent just under 4.5 hours on 10/15/20 making 143 QSOs. As for band selection and power this year, it will depend on if I make a single band or all band effort. I might try 15M or 20M running low power or high power. I will continue to watch solar conditions to see what we can expect for this weekend.

This year I might spend some with sitting (working?) with Dean, N6BV. He has made this offer a few times and due to my scheduling I have not been able to take him up on it. Nothing like spending a few hours with the experience someone like Dean has. He will be working at N6RO this weekend, where I assume they will sign NR6O.

The only goals for this contest would be to improve on my 2011 numbers. 200 contacts seems to be a nice, round number to shoot for. Not sure how much time I will spend Saturday in my shack, as opposed to sitting at RO. If I could put in 6-8 hours at my home on Saturday, 200 should be a number I go right past.

2012 ARRL DX SSB Goals

Not sure it will be a real big effort this weekend, on the heels of the ARRL International DX CW Contest a few weeks ago. This time around it’s the SSB version, a contest in which I won my section last year running single operator, high power, assisted. This year, still without my low band vertical antenna, I will be relegated to 10/15/20M…again!

It’s not that I don’t like using SSB as a mode, I do. I find it thrilling to actually talk to someone in a distant land. My shack and set up seem to do CW and RTTY much better than SSB. So I found it surprising that 315 QSOs, 113 DXC and a final score of 106,107 was the top score in my category. This year I doubt I will spend 13 hours participating in the ARRL DX. I will put in a few hours at the beginning of the contest, beaming Asia/Oceania, possibly South America.

Conditions have been in decline since the CW version of this contest just a few weeks ago. As of this writing the SFI is 104, SSN of 24 and an A of 14. Not really optimal conditions to operate under, still I suspect I will be able to make a few contacts to start this contest. I am hoping to put up 100-150 QSOs in 3 hours of BIC (butt in chair).

Sunday might be worthwhile, as I am planning on taking the day off from work, but have an 11am engagement. That might give me sunrise and some time after 2pm, in order to finish out the contest. Again, not really looking for any real goals this time around. While it would be great to surpass what last year’s score was, I just don’t think I will find the time to put in a double digit effort. Having the hex beam only about 40′ high won’t help. If I decide to run high power again, the Alpha 76PA will be flawless as always, so I will be able to get a signal out. Then again, as the saying goes, “if you can hear them, you can work them.”

Running low power in the last few contests I have been able to hear many signals, but my problem has been getting a 100w signal out at only 40′. Regardless of what happens I will put in a good effort and look to add a few new DXCC entities on a few bands, namely 10M (if open) and 15M. Strangely enough, 15M outnumbers 20M when it comes to the number of DXCC entities I have worked.

ARRL International DX CW Goals

I’ve spent the past 75 minutes or so going over previous contest results and looking at the most recent propagation charts prepared by Dean, N6BV and Stu, K6TU. These charts were actually for WPX RTTY last weekend, but solar conditions are shaping up much the same for this week, so the information contained within these charts should be relative. The ARRL International DX Contest is a 3 point per contact contest, so I will be trying to work all contacts that are not in the US or Canada.

I was planning on another SOSB (single op, single band) effort, but after further consideration I think I will work all the high bands (10/15/20M). This should give me many more operators to work through out the time I have set aside to participate. If this weekend is like last weekend 15M was probably the best band, based on what I read on the 3830 Reflector. My hope 20M is strong for me, which has usually been the case in many prior contests.

Looking at my time, I am going to hope for 16 hours of operating, which would be 4 hours to start the contest and then 12 hours on Saturday (6am-6pm), maybe a bit longer if possible. Based on my 2010 resulted, I averaged 22 QSO/hour. Not great by any means, but I hope to keep a 30 rate but will knock it down just a bit shoot for 450 QSO, 150 MULTS and a final score of 202,500 points.

My CW skills have improved, but are still not at a level that I feel comfortable attempting to run a frequency, which would equate to a rate of over 30/hour. Even though all my contacts will be in search & pounce I feel confident I can achieve my goal with a bit of work. Over the last few contests I have entered, CW has become my strongest mode. I wish I could say it was more proficient at this point, but it’s still a learning process, one that I am improving every time I use the mode.