Well the biggest change is that we sold our house in VT and have moved back to MA. Right now, we are renting a house in Rockport. Actually not a bad place to be in the Spring. Weather is nice, cool but not cold and the tourists haven't shown up yet so the traffic is still OK.
Also nice to get back to some decent fish in the restaurants. You just can't get good fish in VT, sorry.
The worst part was being off the air for almost 2 months. That was not fun.
We found a house in Georgetown and will be moving at the end of June.
I don't mind telling you the last six months have been the worst of my life. I will never do this again!
I don't miss VT much but I do miss my house. We had it build for us and it was just what we wanted. But, best laid plans as they say.
Temporary Station
The below pictures are of the temporary station. Since I didn't want to impact the property, I bought an EFHW 80-10 meter antenna and hung it over a tree in the back yard and tied it off to the porch on the back of the house and to a tree out in the woods. It's direction is NW to SE. I didn't intend it that way, it just happened.
I had a 20 foot piece of COAX and used that to connect the radio and antenna. Unfortunately, it was not long enough to bring in through the window, so I have to leave the radio on the porch. A little bit of a nuisance since I can't leave it out there.
The antenna works quite well. It tunes 80 - 10 meters fine except for 30 meters. I only get a 2:1 SWR on 30.
Wires come in through the window and I use foam strips to form a seal.
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| Temporary EFHW 80-10 tied to the porch railing. |
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| EFHW up over the tree, about 50 feet up. |
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| Using an old laptop as my computer for the Flex-6300. |
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| Radio sits outside. My feed line was not long enough to put the radio indoors. |
WES
I was able to do the January February and June WES.
Month QSO Overall QRO
Jan 50 33 25
Feb 92 15 7
June 33 60 47
K3Y
As you may know K3Y is a month long SKCC anniversary event. The goals is to contact as many K3Y operators on as many bands and areas as possible.
This is not a contest, so WARC bands are permitted. I did good this year I got a total of 67 out of a 143 slots. and got the grand sweep. Worked all zones 0-9 plus KH6, KL7, KP4, EU, AF, OC, SA, NA and AS. 19 in all. I also worked 90+ different operators out of 195. I also operated as K3Y/1 and made 16 contacts. I am happy with my results.
Brags
For January I had 124 brags (K3Y counted as brags), 38 in February, 19 in April and 81 in May.
So far for June I have 52 brags.
All for now. Thanks for stopping by!
73 Dave KB1WOD
