[W5SFA] RaDAR Event

[Christy]

Christy and I had a blast !  We only made 9 contacts and two stops, but we attempted to contact about 30 people.  We were on 40 mtrs, and using FT8.  

We started at our house, sitting on the front porch steps with our antenna in the middle of the yard.
We were using an Icom 7300, and a Wolf River Coils antenna.  The guys called it a manual screwdriver type antenna, and it usually works good for 20 and 40 mtrs.

Anyway, it was all set up Friday night,
got up Sat, hooked it back up and started hamming.  Christy (W5DRJ) ran the communications, while I (W5DBJ) worried over the gear.
30 mins later, we had our 5 contacts. 

Loaded everything into the trunk, hit the road.  A few miles away, we stopped near an abandoned bridge. 9 mins later we were ready.  Battery hooked up to radio. Antenna and radials deployed, laptop running.  And then we started ve making contacts. 

An hour later we only had 4 more contacts.  But the best part of the day, was seeing NE5B as a contact.  We almost missed him, but it was way cool talking to another club member. Not sure why we had a hard time with contacts, maybe the battery we were using got low, and power levels dropped, not sure.  But we had a blast.

So we packed everything up and headed to Bellville to see the other RaDAR operators, and enjoyed swapping tales of the event.

You bet, we are ready to do this again!

David and Christy
W5DBJ and W5DRJ
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