My Saturday was spent coaxing a G5RV to get up into the trees and not get stuck under inconvenient branches. But persistence seems to have been rewarded; I just worked KU4BP in North Carolina on 3.787 LSB and it was like he was sitting in the room next to me. He gave me a 59 and said I had a solid signal into North Carolina. I was so tired at that point that I started to log it as a 40M contact because I'd been on 40 right before I switched bands and heard him calling CQ…I had forgotten that I had switched bands and was stunned when LoTW told me I had the wrong band and I realized I was getting out like that on 80!
I will say that the boy and I got really lucky this morning. The neighbor had a couple of guys doing tree work for him, and one of them saw us trying to get the rope over the limb of one of the trees and came over to ask what we were doing. I told him and he offered to climb the tree for me. I said, how much is that going to cost me? He hemmed and hawed a bit and finally said he'd climb both trees and throw the rope over for $50. I figured that was a bargain for something I wasn't about to do myself…
(I was so tired last night that apparently I forgot to mention that our tree climber had spikes and safety equipment. He was a pro, not just some guy climbing a tree for $50. I was kind of amazed that he was working tree trimming and not as a lineman for the local electric utility. He was that good.)