Well, FYBO was a total bust for me. I setup in the backyard with a 40m EFHW, HB1B, J38 and the Android keyer. The temperature was about 20 degrees and breezy. I found that I was getting much colder than I expected. Initially I had a hard time finding an open frequency to call CQ since there were so many other contests going this weekend. The contest ops were sending way faster than I could copy, so I had no chance of working any of them. I managed to work 1 FYBO station - Nick WA5BDU. (I recognized the callsign from the QRP-L)
Anyway, I gave up after about 45 minutes because I started picking terrible EMI from somewhere and could hardly pick out anyone. I normally have an S7 noise floor in my house, but outside is mostly quiet... Of course not this time.
The Android keyer worked well, but I realized that it might have been best to use a 10 turn pot instead of a fixed value resistor, because as the circuit got cold, the frequency shifted some. As a result, I had to adjust the sidetone on the Android app to find the LM567's frequency. Also, I should consider some RFI mitigation because unless I kept the keyer away from the feedline, the circuit was a bit sporatic.
Oh well. Maybe someday I'll move somewhere with more property and ZERO neighbors to cause EMI.
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