|
|
Bahamas
DXpedition 2009May 3, 2009
Antennas, Anxiousness,
and Preparation
It's hard to believe that the trip
is less than a month away. May is looking to be fairly crazy
month which is leading to a bit of mild anxiety. My club, The
East Greenbush Amateur Radio Association,
W2EGB (www.w2egb.org), will be
having our annual Hamfest next Saturday, May 10, 2009.
Fortunately I don't need any more gear for the trip and can give my
entire attention over to the event.
Almost every other
weekend in May is also booked, so there will be some late nights
packing and preparing. My load list is only about 30% complete
but the most important pieces (the ham gear, of course) have been
selected.
I finished the G5RV on Friday evening. For
those of you playing at home I built a full sized, 102 foot antenna
feed with 31 feet of 450 ohm ladder line. The wire 16 gauge
speaker wire that I bought at a local discount store. The
SO-239 at the end of the connector was probably the single most
expensive component. Saturday morning I tried it out with the
FT-817 --> everything was working well to my Elecraft T1 autotuner
stopped working. I'm pretty sure that 9V battery finally gave
up the ghost since it hasn't been changes in the three years.
|
|
|
