Checked on the hives this weekend and went ahead and supered the big one. At the rate they’re going, I expect the top brood box to be drawn out completely in another week and I wanted to give them some room to keep working.
The second colony was doing OK at last check, but was looking a little lackadaisical from the outside and sure enough, seems to have superseded. I saw eggs and larvae but no capped brood, so hopefully things are starting to ramp up here shortly. If not, I should be able to move a frame or two over from the boomer and kickstart things. I had added a feeder with 1:1 last weekend to encourage comb building but they’re not finding it.
Couple of the kids suited up for some close up help. It was windier than I would have liked, but we inspect with the weather we have, not the weather we want. In and out without any sort of incident, so I’ll call it a win. They’re still working henbit and dead nettle which has been thick on the fields now for a couple of weeks. Dandelions are starting to come on now strong and it looks like some tree pollen is still out there. The next waves will be clover and privet. Cross your fingers.
Radio-wise, I was able to work Ireland and the Netherlands JT65/17m on Saturday morning. It was surprising (and fun) to have them coming back to my CQ rather than the other way around. Putzed around a bit decoding weather fax transmissions out of New Orleans and made a couple of PSK31 contacts in the evening. After running HRD/DM780 for a month or so, I’ve switched back to Linux (flrig/fldigi/cqrlog) and will probably stay put for awhile. Stability hasn’t been a problem and I’ll have an easier time transitioning from the VM to a dedicated workstation. It’ll certainly be cheaper in any case.
Still having a ball with the digital modes, obviously, and along with my PODXS 070 membership (#2497) I joined the 30M Digital Group last week too (#8217)
Eyeballing RTTY next.