To OLIVIA, With Love

I just love dabbling in digital modes. Some I find to be boring, some too fast for my hand, and some just utterly confusing. Last night, I tried OLIVIA for the first time. We went over to visit Daddy, and he was playing around with DM780 and had OLIVIA all set up. He was really wanting someone to try it, and being the brave soul that I am... I gave it a shot.

I probably called CQ for nearly 45 minutes before anyone came back. Apparently, there's not a lot of Hams working it -- or maybe it was just a bad night for it. I was on 80m around 3.577 and, FINALLY, I got a response. Thanks goes out to Gary, WB8ROL, for making that my first OLIVIA contact. Gary was very nice, and taught me a few things I needed to know. Being as slow as it is, it took us nearly an hour to complete our conversation, but I had fun nonetheless!

I really really like how I can type everything out (I'm a quick typer -- nearly 70 wpm) while I'm reading their response back to me, and then hit Auto-Send and get up -- stretch, have a break, go to see "John", etc... all the while, transmitting my response. I really had fun "talking" with OLIVIA.

Tim gave it a try, too. I'm sure he'll blog about it over in his neck of the woods, if you're curious. He's usually more thorough and technical about things than I am. HAHA I hear there is a nice article about OLIVIA in December's QST magazine. So, if you're interested, check it out!

It's slow, but it's tons of fun!