<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div dir="ltr"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">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. </span><br><p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="s1"><br></span></p><p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="s1">We started at our house, sitting on the front porch steps with our antenna in the middle of the yard.</span></p><p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="s1">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.</span></p><p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="s1"><br></span></p><p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="s1">Anyway, it was all set up </span><span class="s2" style="text-decoration: underline;">Friday night</span><span class="s1">,</span></p><p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="s1">got up Sat, hooked it back up and started hamming. Christy (W5DRJ) ran the communications, while I (W5DBJ) worried over the gear.</span></p><p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="s1">30 mins later, we had our 5 contacts. </span></p><p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="s1"><br></span></p><p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="s1">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. </span></p><p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="s1"><br></span></p><p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="s1">An hour later we only had 4 more contacts. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But the best part of the day, was seeing NE5B as a contact. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>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.</span></p><p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="s1"><br></span></p><p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="s1">So we packed everything up and headed to Bellville to see the other RaDAR operators, and enjoyed swapping tales of the event.</span></p><p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="s1"><br></span></p><p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="s1">You bet, we are ready to do this again!</span></p><p class="p2" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 25.1px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><br><span class="s1"></span></p><p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="s1">David and Christy</span></p><p class="p1" style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"><span class="s1">W5DBJ and W5DRJ</span></p></div></body></html>