Operating at Buckhorn last week felt so good, so right, that I was ready for more, and on Sunday I had most of the day free. The radio bag was in the car, I got lots of coffee at Kwik-Trip, and I was off to the spot that I activated back in January.
It was mostly sunny, but quite windy; the temperature was in the 30s, having actually dipped below freezing overnight. All the equipment and setup was as I have described so often before; the one exception was the 6 Ah Bioenno battery I got last year. Based on my observations of current consumption on a typical activation, I thought that I had enough power in there for two activations and didn’t recharge it after last Tuesday. I am happy to say that I was correct !
It feels like good luck to me when I turn on the radio and there’s someone right there for my first contact, and that’s how this activation began!
Also as usual, I self-spotted and ran hunters, including a few P2Ps, one every few minutes, until QRM chased me away. While I was looking for an open space, hunting proved almost as effective, so I continued, tuning up and down the phone section of 20 meters.
In the end, I made 24 contacts in just under 3 hours. More than half of them were park-to-park, and one of those was a rare twofer-to-twofer! Also notable was VE6LK, activating an all-time-new-one in Alberta!
That’s as far as I got, about 2 weeks ago, just after the activation – whatever else I might have written about seems to have been overwritten by more recent events, and I just want to get this posted and move on.
As always, my thanks for visiting driftlessqrp! Another post coming soon!
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