So I guess most know my 110ft tower came down just before Xmas in that "bomb
cyclone" storm. After several inches of rain loosened everything up, 70mph
winds blew a tree on one set of guys ant that was that.. I have 80 foot trees
around me so the only thing I could think of to "get something" on the air, was
to lash my 2 element 6 meter rover antenna to the shop and point it southwest
(basically pointed at all the USA considering the pattern of a 2 el beam), and
hope for some e-skip. Still running 300 watts, that didn't change.. Well really
not any e-skip during the times I was on, so no BIG DX as I had hoped for, hah
hah. All my Q's were on FT-8, though I looked for SSB stations regularly on the
"low end".
Final tally for maybe 5 hours operating time:
14 QSO's in 8 grids. (worked all 6 New England states actually)
Total score, 112
wahoo! Still it was a challenge and because of that pretty much fun!
On 50.313MHz there were meteor pings coming in ALL the time. Sometimes the
screen was filled with them, of course, too short to decode. Made me think
making skeds on MSK144 would probably have netted some neat stuff, but I guess
I wasn't THAT motivated.
Plan is to get something temporary up as soon as I can for 6,2,220,432.. and
deal with replacing the big tower when it warms up..
bill, k1DY in FN54JQ Maine
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