Chapter 10

There's a reason why I'm blogging instead of playing on the radio. It's because every damned frequency I have the equipment to use is utterly devoid of use.

I got up at about 0730 and immediately headed to the shack. Flipping the Tempo onto 75m, I gave the knob a twirl, hoping to hear at least one "CQ MAQP". Instead, all I heard was old men rambling on and on about things which I suppose were very important to them.

As an aside, I cannot even remember what they were droning about; it probably had something to do with how quickly or slowly they were dying. I mean, I'm all for ragchewing - I do it all the time on the Marconi Net on 3872 kHz - but this gives new meaning to the idea that amateur radio is a dying hobby! Sheesh!

Anyway, I made two contacts in four hours, both on 20m, neither in the Mid-Atlantic (one in FL, the other in GA). Conditions are absolutely terrible; a few Europeans were heard about 1000 EST, but no one else. I wanted to work 40m, but the Tempo is still inop on that band.

I am terribly disappointed. I wanted like nothing else to get on the air and make contacts. 75m was full of blahblahblah, and 20m was dead. I wish I had 40m, but I can't figure out the problem. I'll try again this afternoon, I guess.

Chapter 9

Now it's the Thursday before MAQP weekend. I'm at work until 9PM. I think everything's okay, even when the storm blows in. Wind, rain, thunderbolts and lightning, very, very frightening. When I arrived at home, the weather was so foul that I merely ran into the house without looking up.

Imagine my surprise when I took the dogs out Friday morning, and found the dipole in a puddle.

Turns out the wire I soldered to the twinlead to make the 75m side of the dipole had broken right at the joint.

Woe! Calamity! Horror!

No problem. I'll just solder it back together; that'll get me through the weekend. Plus, I've got all morning, because Friday I don't have to be in the office until 1PM.

I just soldered it back together, and proceeded to string it back up. As I was hoisting it back up, I sensed resistance; thinking it was just a kink in the rope, I gave it a yank.

Snap!

Damn! Same break, just on the other side. Utterly furious, I spool up the extra wire and toss it into the summer kitchen.

It's now 10:30AM. I know I'm not going to have time tonight to pull something together. It's now or never.

Out comes the remains of the polyethylene cutting board. A few quick cuts with the jigsaw later, I have five rectangular bits of plastic. I drilled enough holes to fit rope, wire, and a spare panel-mount SO-239 connector, so that I had a center insulator and four "end" insulators. 120' of wire and a few stainless bits, and it was finished.

By 12:05, it was up. I had already been on and off the roof, attached one end to the chimney, and tossed the other end into the walnut tree. I had about thirty seconds to test it.

The doublet loaded okay, though it wasn't as good as I thought it'd be. I had had to fold over a piece on each end to make it fit the available space, and that was playing merry hell with the thing.

Gotta leave it for now. Maybe I can catch up with it Sunday morning...

Chapter 8

So a few weeks ago, I start making preparations for the Mid-Atlantic QSO Party on Mother's Day weekend. I downloaded a new piece of software - WB3W's MAQP software, found at http://www.wb3w.net/wb3wlogs_MAQP.htm - set it up, and played with it a bit. Some testing of the station was done, making QSOs on 75m and 20m.

The dipole was moved from directly over the summer kitchen to between the main house's chimney and one of the tall walnut trees behind the carriage house. Finally it had dawned on me why the parallel dipole never really loaded on 20m - with its proximity to the summer kitchen's galvanized metal roof, the dipole's loading when completely wonky. Now the 20m dipole worked (after a fashion). The first contact made with the repositioned dipole was Ukraine, a 59 USB report with about 90 watts.

The vertical still works better, though; I made a few side-by-side comparisons, and the vertical just gets out better. The dipole is better on receive, being slightly more quiet.

Now it's a matter of waiting a few weeks for the MAQP to begin.