Dave Heil wrote in message ...
Brian Kelly wrote:


40' push-up mast. Site three was in Mt. Airy, across the road from a
nice, quiet 1600 acre city forest. I used a 60 foot tower there.
Finally, I moved to the west side of the city to Cheviot.

Jeez. Didja ever get to completely unpack??

It was good training for the Foreign Service days ahead. Unpack
everything, put up the antennas, operate for two or three years, take
down the antennas, pack everything, move to a new location, unpack
everything, put up the antennas...

Welp at least ya didn't suffer the size of military paychecks despite
the same lifestyle. What were you anyway, comms officer?

"World's most traveled tower". Foggy Bottom did pay you for the tower
when you left it with 'em right?

Indeed they did and they paid to move it a bunch of times.

Slick. You's have had a helluva time convincing Corporate America to
move a tower every time they relocated you.

I gave up on Detroit iron 20 years ago and I haven't run across any
particularly good reasons to go back.

Most of the U.S. machines are now much better than those made a couple
of decades back. You'll find a few Q-ships though. The Pontiac Vibe,
for example, is a Toyota.

Those are OK, my Chebby Geo is a Suzuki. Two of my daughters have
Saturns and they seem pretty good but boy their pocketbooks got
spanked good. It's all getting mish-mashed, the local GM plant is
starting to gear up for building Saabs.

I'm tuned, we have monstrous herds of the things close at hand right
here, we do some *serious* deer-ducking too. At 60 mph on four-lane
divided highways.

The past couple of winters it hasn't been uncommon to come home at night
to find twenty or thirty of the critters on our place. They've even
bedded down right around the perimeter of the house.

A lot of the wild critters which have been running away from human
civilation for years are adapting and moving back in with us. About
five years ago a mountain lion showed up around here. 'Possums and
racoons are driving the city folk nuts, etc. WRT to deer what we need
is more mountain lions, *lots* more.

I have a half side of beef in the freezer, your choice of beverage, a
comfy guest room and plenty of radio gear. If you talk 'EY into coming,
you guys can fight to see who gets the futon in the shack overflow room.

He gets the back deck, I get the guest room.

The guest room is comfy. The futon is twelve feet from the rig.

OK then, I'll take the futon.

I understand, now that you've 'splained it to me. We could use a
four-foot rack, turned on its side. That's going to be one expensive
stainless panel.

This is gonna be a class radio, right up there with the IC-7800, cost
in NO object.

Reminds me of OH2BH's classic tale of the Russian EMP-proof cellular
phone. It was all vacuum tubes and took up the trunk of a car.

Only a Russian . .

I'm gonna spend a few hours running with the big dawgs this weekend as
a reality check, third op at the N3RS baby multi in the ARRL CW DX
blast. Haven't done one of these for a quarter century, this is gonna
be UGLY.

I heard one of your ops calling LU2EWL on 10m yesterday.

They did quite well on 10M, lotta Qs and mults despite the gloom and
doom over the spots counts.

Dave K8MN

w3rv