Playing Catch Up

I know it's been a while since my last entry so let me play a little catch up. January has been a busy month and to be honest I haven't done a whole lot of radioing. What radioing I have done has been on 2 meters, checking into the different nets and the occasional QSO here and there. We attended the Morristown hamfest a couple of weeks ago where we bought all the wire we needed to build our own Windom antenna to put in the backyard. We bought a 100' of RG-8, 25' of RG-213, 140' or so of some 13 awg copper wire, some PL-259 connectors, and a couple of dog bones insulators. While at the hamfest, Robin (AJ4IJ) won a major award... a 2008-2009 ARRL repeater directory. That's the first time any of us has won a prize at a hamfest. We all thought that was pretty neat.

Since the hamfest, we've purchased a 4:1 balun from The Wireman, some thimbles, and we are still waiting on an I.C.E. lightning arrestor to arrive. Once that gets here, we will have everything we need to build and raise our antenna, and bring our HF radio home. Yes we finally purchased an HF rig. What did we purchase you ask? Well, we got a great deal on an ICOM IC-756 Pro. Gotta love the fish finder on that rig. It's been over at Dads(KU4ME) ever since. It works quite well and has great audio. I can't wait to get it over here and get on the air to see how we do with the Windom.

What else has been happening, well last weekend Robin and I went to take our EmComm level 1 and 2 tests. We passed with flying colors and are now EmComm 1 & 2 certified. We await our certificates. With me passing the EmComm tests, I have officially been appointed as EC for Union County ARES here in Tennessee. Up until now, Claiborne County has been taking care of our counties needs when it comes to emergency communications. We have quite a bit of work to do to get the ball rolling but look forward to get an Amateur Radio presence going on in our county. There are several hams in our county so we have a good base to recruit from.
Anyway, that's all I have for the time being, until next time...

Good DX and Happy Contesting
73 de AJ4JD
Tim