Saturday, January 28, 2012

St Andrews State Park Portable Ops

The St Andrews State Park was a beautiful venue for portable ops. There was a chilly wind but staying in the sun helped. Our setup was on picnic tables under a roof. We were constrained with antennas a bit because we could not venture out on the dunes per the rules. Mike Rutherford KJ4QVR joined us. He worked Ireland on 10 meters from his mobile. Marv KK4DKT made some contacts between 20 and 10 meters. Greg N4KGL did some 40 and 20 meter QRP CW contacts. He also ventured on the pier with his pedestrian mobile QRP rig. He worked PA and Toronto while on the pier. We had a troop of scouts come by and they asked lots of question. In addition we had Marv's wife Melissa, the Dunkins Bob WB4BLX and Linda KG4TJL, the Johnsons and Vic K4GXV and Sally KD4UUN. We also had a Ian a Canadian Ham visitor. Enjoy the photos.

Monday, January 2, 2012

Portable Ops at Mr. Grumpy's Ranch

We had a good portable operations gathering at Mr. Grumpy's Crooked Fence Ranch near SouthPort, FL Monday January 2nd. The portable ops included testing Ron Downs new MFJ 6 band vertical antenna which worked on first try. Addison Marvin helped Dave Clark test out his new Yaesu 857 rig on a portable 20 meter dipole. Jim Mc Quagge checked out some QRP radios on a portable antenna. Greg Lane's new Solar panel was demonstrated for battery charging. Greg also did some QRP pedestrian mobile ops. There were a number of club members that joined in. Of course the horses were very curious about our goings on. See the pictures. A big thanks to Don Cornelius AKA Mr. Grumpy who was our host.