I just realized I haven’t posted anything here in months. I am truly ashamed of myself. Really I am.
Well, okay, not really. It’s just that it’s been one hell of a busy winter. And bloody cold. We had over 50 days of temperatures below zero, and it took it’s toll on everyone and everything. Water supply froze up out at the farm, non-starting cars, water main breaks here in town… So let’s see if I can get caught up a little bit here.
This is the Jeep. Got that late last fall. I was looking at a Dodge Dart, a nice, sporty little commuter style car with good fuel economy, useful, fairly comfortable to drive. So, of course, I came home with this.
A 2013 totally over the top Jeep with a lift kit, 35” tires, rock guards, skid plates and a soon-to-be-installed 9,500 pound capacity winch.
And yes, it’s generally that dirty. In fact, the poor thing has been covered in mud, snow, salt, slush and miscellaneous debris since I got it.
I finally got the Yaesu 7900 dual band transceiver installed in it yesterday. Moving with my usual lightening speed, it only took me four months to get the thing installed. Well, it’s been bloody cold around here, and trying to install radios when your fingers go numb literally within seconds of taking your gloves off isn’t a good idea. But now it’s March and it’s getting warmer… Yeah, sure it is. Was 20 degrees yesterday. So much for spring. Had to fire up the big kerosene heater in the garage for half an hour before I could even start.
Had to get a new antenna mount and antenna for it. I’d been using a mag-mount on the Magnum, which won’t work on the Jeep because it’s a sort-of convertible. There’s a T-top over the passenger compartment and the whole back roof of the thing comes off after removing about six bolts. So the mag-mount was out. Finally got a tailgate mounting bracket and I’m finally back on the air. which is a good thing because I’m a storm spotter for the local ARES/RACES group and it’s damned hard to spot storms when you can’t communicate with the EmCom center down at the sheriff’s department.
I’ve managed to pick up a ton of various radio equipment over the last few months. Most of which I can’t use because of the antenna situation around here. The performance of the Comet vertical is, well, let’s just say not very good and leave it at that. I want to get down on 80/75 meters, and the poor Comet just doesn’t hack it. It’s so inefficient on the lower bands I might as well be dumping my transmitter directly into a dummy load. I also can’t use the big 1,500 watt amplifier I picked up recently because the Comet can only handle around 250 watts.
I have two antennas laying around I want to try. I picked up another vertical, this one far more efficient and able to handle legal limit, and an off center fed dipole. Both are theoretically able to handle multiple bands without an antenna tuner, and both are able to handle full legal limit power.
Again, though, the weather hasn’t been cooperating. Aside from one day when the temperature actually flirted with 50 degrees, we’ve been in the deep freeze around here. Trying to hang dipoles from trees, running nearly a hundred feet of LMR-400, assembling 31 foot long vertical antennas and tuning them with temperatures barely up in the 20s isn’t exactly my idea of fun, so I’m impatiently waiting for warmer weather.
Speaking of radio stuff… 10 meters has been absolutely crazy the last couple of weeks during the daylight hours. This is a screen shot from the Kenwood 990’s waterfall display:
The ‘old timers’ tell me this is the best they’ve seen 10 meters in decades. I’m monitoring the PSK part of the band right now, around 28.120.150 and I’m seeing wall to wall PSK traces on the display. Lots of eastern European countries coming in at the moment. Last night around 7:30 PM local time I even saw a few coming in from Japan when the band was apparently closing down for the night.
grouchyfarmer 