Well quite an experience... to say the least
Had a late start but managed to get to CHARLTON, CAMDEN and MCINTOSH on
Saturday.
Made about 91 CW QSOs in the three counties. Was pretty beat by 1030PM so
called it
quits.
Was really geared up on Sunday. Had made my way over to GLYNN right next to
the
BRANTLEY line, WARE county was only 30 minutes away. Had to made a sharp turn
and
turned over a cup of coffee and did not realize that it was on the top of the
radio right where
in the interface connected. Just about 955AM rebooted everything to give me a
fresh start
and check one of the macros to send CW and the 706 started scanning down the
band.
Everytime I transmitted it would scan down the band a few KHz... Investigating
and saw that
the coffee had gotten into the radio and or connectors. After fiddleing with
it for over an hour,
I finally gave up I could not get it to stop scanning. I am sure that some
coffee got into the
multi pin connector and maybe in the radio...
The weather was horrible both days. Wind nearly blowed me off the road both
days. Lots of
rain in South East Georgia. No T-storms thank goodness! I never did log a
contact in the
computer. N1MM kept telling me that it was "Invalid/Missing Exchange". I just
used the
macros for CW and hand/paper logged the contacts.
Man this was a big 740 mile round trip. Over $125 in gas alone. A hotel room,
5 meals out.
Don't know about the radio yet. BTW my car ran HOT about 15 miles South of
Folkston,
GA... middle of the Okefenokee Swamp. Spend about 45 minutes in a country gas
station
waiting for the car to cool a bit. Had to bring water in a gallon pickle jar
that I scraped up out
of a dumpster. Was raining the entire time. Man, there has to be some humor
here, but at
the time, it was not readily apparent...
Really had my sights set on Glynn, Brantley, Clinch, Atkinson, Berrier and some
South
central and western counties. I apologize for not coming through on the
counties that I said
that I was doing.
There seemed to be plenty of activity. The bands seemed very long. The
foriegn broadcast
was quite strong on 40M. Worked several EUs Saturday. Worked a few FL and a
couple of
AL (K4SAV and N4BCB) stations. Most of my activity was on 40M with a little on
20M. No
80M activity--my screwdriver will just not go to that portion of the band. I
did tune 15M one
time, but heard nothing.
Thanks to everyone for the QSOs. And especially thanks for slowing down the CW
for me...
tolerating all the ???
Maybe next year I can come through as promised.
73
Jim/KC4HW
http://www.AlabamaContestGroup.org
http://www.AlabamaQSOParty.org (June 2nd and 3rd, 2007)
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