My trip to VP5-land

[Albers-2]

Got back last night from a week-long scuba diving trip to Providenciales (a.k.a. Provo) island in the Turks and Caicos. Long days of diving (including 2 X 45 min bus rides to the marina and 2 X ~ hour boat trips to West Caicos where the diving is best) left not much time for operating, but I had the KX-1 along and had a blast in the time that I did spend. Total of 36 contacts, 22 of which were on 30m and the rest on 40 and 20. Mich, Wis, IN, WV, NY, CT, GA OH, etc and as previously posted, ECN NCS in Oregon. Winds came up from the north, causing the scheduled night dives to be cancelled, but the 12V gel cell in my big dive light was happy to be powering the KX-1 instead.

The hotel wasn't close to the ocean, but heck, nothing on the whole island is really very far from the salt water. We had a third floor room. I pushed the little table up against the window so only needed about a foot of wire to reach the window. Antenna consisted of 25 ft wire out the window, with the far end attached to a nylon cord sloping down to a low palm tree, with the wire itself not in the tree and maybe 12 ft above ground. Had my 3, quarter-wavish, couterpoise wires lying on the floor, around the periphery of the room so as not to be in the way. KX-1 tuner loaded it up FB on all three bands, SWR 1.2 max. Adding to the recent postings about favorite antennae, I do like this combination of 25 ft wire plus three, quarter wave (approx) counterpoise wires. Going out a window and having as much of the 25ft wire in the air as possible works best, but I've also had very good results from ground-floor operating positions with the wire sloping up to convenient trees or my 20 ft crappie pole.

I did have a bit of configuration problems with the 25 ft wire - kind of a comedy of errors. First attempt put the wire as high in the palm tree as I could get, but when the winds came up I saw this was a bad idea - the palm fronds got all wrapped around the supporting string and even the wire. Next attempt tied the string lower in the palm so the swaying branches wouldn't hit it, but then it rained and made the palm fronds wet and heavy and sagging, so I was back to having a threatened wire. Then, from the vacant lot next to the hotel I found a 2 X 3 board about 9 ft long, and rigged it as a mast by jamming it into hedges by the driveway (all the while not saying anything to the hotel staff, operating in the "easier to ask forgiveness than permission" mode. Well, on the next-to-last day my 25 ft wire snapped while I was away from the room, the mast probably fell into the driveway along with 18 ft of wire and a bunch of nylon twine, and I guess someone cleaned up the mess. I had no spare wire with me, so I borrowed some from the longest counterpoise wire - but now I had a 2.5 : 1 SWR  on 40. Sigh. Made contacts anyway!

Thanks to Jody, VP5JM, secretary of the Turks and Caicos Amateur Radio Society, (and to FedEx) for expediting my license!

73
Ray K2HYD
_______________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Post to: [hidden email]
You must be a subscriber to post to the list.
Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.):
 http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft   

Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm
Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com