Calling CQ is still a weird thing for me. I mostly just spin the dial and hope to find someone else calling CQ; or even better someone calling CQ DX or CQ Contest. These are great because it’s a narrow set of conversational topics. You get an RST, you give an RST, you exchange QTH and probably a handle and maybe compare equipment. Then you move on.

For an introvert like me, this is tops because I get to make a contact and send off a QSL card (and hopefully get one back) without having to stumble through an open-ended conversation.

I’ve called CQ myself twice since the HF rig went on the air at the beginning of September. The first call resulted in a nice QSO with a ham in central Pennsylvania. A bit generic, but nice. And I was so frazzled at the end of that I dropped the frequency.

Tonight I called CQ and ended up making contact with KB1TUR in Northwest Maine. It was a great QSO where we talked about home and micro brews as well as the standard ham topics. At 11 minutes, that is by far my longest QSO. Unfortunately the band started shifting and we started losing each other in the noise.

At any rate it seems there is a standing offer to boil up some lobsters in Maine if I manage to find myself in the area with a trunk full of homebrew. So I have that going for me. Which is nice.

The real question—and one that wasn’t asked during the QSO—who has the better mustache?

A mustache to rival mine?