Month: June 2016

Because I didn’t want to spend a lot of time explaining to TSA what ham radio is, and because we already had a surfeit of carry-on luggage to begin with, I decided to ship my rig and other equipment to a friend in Naples, and then ship it back from the hotel where we ended up later in the week.  To do this, I looked at comparative prices from UPS and FedEx for a box of a particular size, weighing 29 pounds, shipped ground freight.  UPS was going to take 3 days, FedEx 2.  And Fed Ex wanted $10 less for the privilege, even with $1K of insurance.  So I went with FedEx.

There was absolutely no problem on the outbound receiving end; the friend was home and signed for the box.  I got to play radio for several days as noted below.

When we went up to Punta Rassa, I didn’t operate because I had to work two days of the four we were there, but also at least partly because I didn’t want to do something that might set off alarms.  (We have that problem at Belzer sometimes if we put out too much RF on 40 meters — because the alarm wiring in the building wasn’t done right, and there’s a pull station fairly close to our riser going up and out of the basement, and that pull station is always the culprit when we set off the fire alarm.)  So I slipped the Nanuk case holding my gear back into the cardboard box it came in, and created the FedEx shipment on Friday.  Once that was all done, I took the box down to the desk and the hotel put it with their outgoing stuff.  Perfectly normal; I’ve done that before with other things.

However.

I missed the pickup on Friday.  Well, figures, it was well after noon before I took it downstairs.  So it sat there over the weekend, during which time FedEx tracking kept insisting they had no record of the tracking number.  Which is annoying, because most shipping companies will tell you that the shipment has been created but not yet picked up.  I figured that would change on Monday.

It didn’t.

I was just about ready to call the hotel and ask, “WTF, over?”  But I thought I’d give them another day, just in case the package got picked up and somehow didn’t get scanned.

Yesterday morning it finally showed up, with a delivery date of June 30 (tomorrow).  So I’m happy now.

The lesson learned is that I should have held onto the package and dropped it off at a FedEx Ship office on Saturday (there were three of them on the way to the airport) instead of leaving it at the hotel.  But no real harm done, except perhaps to my state of mind 🙂

FWIW, I bought this Nanuk case from DX Engineering and everything I took (except the Buddipole, of course, which went into checked baggage, and the computer, which I tote in my backpack) fit nicely into it.  When it gets home, I’ll take a few pictures and post them.

So my Florida QSOing ended at 53 contacts in just about 73 hours.  (Again, I wasn’t trying hard; it was true “holiday style” operating.  I’d operate for a while, then go do something else, then operate for a while, go do something with my wife, etc., wash rinse repeat.)  I had one 6M JT65 contact but that was nothing to write home about; it was a Florida ham who was only a few miles away.  I also had one complete 15M JT65 contact with a ham in Brazil, but I had to stop using 15M after that because the antenna was too close to the rig and even at 15W it was interfering with the USB link between the SignaLink and the computer.  (I was lucky that the other ham was patient.)  But I was ready to stop then anyway; it was my last QSO of the trip.

All QSOs were JT9 and on 20M except for those two, which were the last two; I stayed on 20M because it was easiest to leave the Buddipole configured for that band, and I was only playing around at the last.  According to the log, I worked hams in Brazil, Spain, Italy, Poland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, Portugal, France, and European Russia — all entities I’ve worked before, but who cares about that.  The other 42 contacts were all US, at least one from each call district.  Sadly I didn’t work anyone from Alaska — or from Hawaii or West by God Virginia, either, the two of which I NEED for JT65 and JT9 both.  (Not that I can count any of these toward WAS — I was too far away from home.)

The Buddipole worked splendidly.  I really liked the ease of setup and it was pretty simple to work it with a tuner, but I think I wouldn’t have had any trouble getting the SWR down even without the tuner.  I’ll probably try that now that I’m home and can set it up outdoors.

All in all a fun trip; I hate going outdoors in Florida in the summer, so this worked out quite well for me.  We also ate well.  Too well.  And got to see some friends we hadn’t seen for a while.  One thing we did that we had never done was visit the Naples-Baker Museum of Art, which had some interesting exhibits on display.

I’m looking forward to our next Florida vacation 🙂

Still working it holiday style for about another 24 hours.  Don’t know if I will be able to set up when we go to Sanibel on Tuesday or not.  Anyway, here is a shot of the Buddipole and my operating position together.  (I moved the Buddipole to get it out of traffic.)

So I’m down in Florida right now, Naples/Collier County to be exact, in grid EL96.  I’ve finally managed to bring an HF rig down with me for the first time.  The question was, what antenna was I going to use?

I finally bit the bullet and bought a Buddipole Deluxe.  Small enough to fit in the big suitcase we brought for my wife’s stuff (she is doing a presentation at a symposium next week and brought things for the group’s auction), and according to the specs, good down to 40 meters.  The rest of the gear went into a Nanuk case from DX Engineering and was FedEx’ed to a friend’s house down here, because I didn’t want to have to explain ham radio to TSA.

The rig is my Yaesu FT-857D.  It’s got an LDG Z-11ProII tuner with it and I’m using a SignaLink for digital work.  Which is mostly what I’m doing — sticking to JT modes just to make it easy, because I’m working holiday-style.  That means, whenever the XYL is at the beach, I can be on the radio.

I didn’t bring any batteries or solar equipment, so I’m stuck with wall socket juice and a Samlex SEC-1235M switching power supply that is running everything through a small RigRunner.  I’m also stuck in the condo for an operating position, which means…

…the Buddipole is set up in the condo’s living room.

Yep, that’s right.  I have the Buddipole set up in a second-floor living room at just about ceiling height, which puts it about 20′ AGL.  The Gulf of Mexico is across the street and the building backs up to a salt-water canal.  The antenna is pointing roughly ENE/WSW and is configured for 20 meters.

And I’m working hams on JT9 (using WSJT-X of course) in European Russia, France, and Portugal, as well as the US.  I’m receiving signals as far down in the mud as -26 and had one report back of -27.

I would never have thought this antenna would do that, given the constraints I’m working under.

Color me impressed, Buddipole.  Color me impressed.

ETA:  Bad cell phone pictures.