A few things have started to trickle in – just before I left for my race, I ordered my HF Vertical. With taking a few days of downtime before getting back into my daily fitness routine training for my September Half, and October Full (the last two of the year), I figured I have enough time to get the deck boards that need to be replaced taken care of, as well as getting this antenna up! I decided to not sell my TS-830s – as tempted as I am, I have a fondness for tube radios, and the 830 is a fun combo of old school with a few new school elements, such as a digital frequency display readout.
The vertical was delivered just before I left – but I hope to have that up and running in the next couple of weeks. In October, I would really like to put in some time for CQ World Wide, the amount of time in which I invest will likely be wholly dependent on how my bow season is going. Deer in the Freezer? All day effort. No Deer in the Freezer? I’ll pop on for in the evening. I’d like to see how many countries I can line up on the HF bands in a calendar year, and this seems like it’d be a good place to start. Part of me wants to do this voice only, but I have a feeling I’ll cave to some digital here and there. I’ve really only ever put one mild effort into that contest when I was first licensed, I know I have absolutely no chance of doing well at it, but I think it could be fun to try it out for the weekend for something different, and to pitch some club points to RDXA.
Next will be the radio – I’ve moved the 7100 back to the car and am putting a standard 3/8×24 mount on the front so I can at least go back to using Hamsticks for the antenna until I order the Tarheel. For both the Baby Tarheel and the Little Tarheel, they use the 3×8 mount, so putting this on now saves a step when I have that delivered. This at least gets me on the air on HF mobile, and I have the existing 2m/440 antenna for the D-Star side of things. For home, I’ve opted for the Yaesu FT-710-AESS. In all of the radios I was looking at, I realized that I’ve kind of shot myself in the foot as far as 2m/440 sideband. I was very closely leaning towards the 7300 only because they have the matching 9700 that I could possibly order down the road to have the matching set, however where our house is, I don’t foresee having the greatest vantage on the high bands, Nothing is stopping me from considering the 9700 down the line not having the 7300, it just won’t be the ‘matching pair’ that it was designed to be.
I’ve spent the last four years since we’ve moved into this house trying to decide what I want to do for antennas, radios, home layout, what we’re planningon doing with the yard, and trying to figure out if we really have enough space for what I wanted to do. What I wanted to do, while minimal, we still don’t quite have the yard for – an 80m OCF would be great, but I couldn’t come up with a way to string it up so I wouldn’t clothesline myself on it, or take up more space in the (already smaller) backyard than I’d want… so I just decided to say screw it, and order something that I know will work and get me on the air. Sure, it’s a compromised antenna, but lots of people use them successfully, so I hope to be another one of those for the time being.
For the radio, I’ve him hawed around for so long there’ve been numerous new rigs released, and I had more to choose from. I have an affinity for Yaesu ever since I bought my first, quality HT – a Yaesu VX-7R. I sold that one to purchase the newer VX-8DR (which is probably the only thing I regret selling greatly by the way), and in the time that I had it I used and abused it. Any company that’s designed an HT in a way where it can get lost in the snow in the Alpine Zone of the Adirondack Mountains in the cold of January (The Mountain was –10 at the base when I climbed it), picked up by a hiker three days later, shipped back to me, and immediately power on has earned my brand loyalty unless they do something drastically wrong.
Roving On 