|
Stokes State Forest, NJ - 1998
 From
1985-89, I found myself living and working on a small, nuclear
powered, small, fast attack, small submarine home-ported out
of San Diego. And did I mention that it was a small submarine?
During my first six months onboard, I slept next to a green
MK-48 in the torpedo room with the other non-quals. Life onboard
eventually got better, but the boat never got bigger. I think
I gravitated toward camping and the great outdoors in response
to this "forced togetherness". During weekends in
port, Russ, Britt and me would hop on our Honda Magnas and ride
south to the adventure and empty roads of Baja California where
we would put our speedometer needles to parts of the dial they
never would have seen if we'd had any sense. Or Andy and I would
head out for a camping trip in the Anza-Borrego Desert east
of San Diego. My ham radio interests were dormant in those days
but we used photography as our excuse to go camping, as if we
needed an excuse. At least Andy was serious about it. In addition
to camping gear, the back of his car contained 35mm, 6x7 and
large format 4x5 camera systems. My photography inventory was
more QRP. But we had fun and I learned to love camping.
My first time to combine radio with camping
came shortly after completion of my Wilderness NC40A. Something
about that word wilderness. I took it literally! I didn't know
it at the time, but every subsequent kit would have the same
effect - no sooner would the kit be built and tested than I
would be thinking C-cells or double A's? How much weight difference
between a dipole/RG58 and a ZM-2/random wire? Where to stow
the rig for backpacking - side pocket or main compartment? In
the meantime, the logbook at home was being filled with DX snagged
by this little blue box.
At my present home QTH, I live 10 miles from
my favorite camping store, Campmor, and an hour away from the
Appalachian Trail. That's a tough combination to resist. In
May 1998, I threw some camping gear and my NC40A, 12V lantern
battery et al into the car and decided to see if this portable
QRP stuff I'd been reading and hearing about was all it was
cracked up to be. An hour and a half later, I was setting up
my tent at Stokes State Forest near the NJ/NY/PA border under
a beautiful blue sky and a shiny copper dipole. A great day
was ahead!
But wonderful days do not always beget wonderful
nights and after a dinner of grilled chicken, mashed potatoes
and wind-blown dirt, the static crashes in the headphones confirmed
the approach of a storm front. The talking head on channel 7
had mentioned the front, saying that the rain would pass to
our north and that we would get high winds. He was right. The
tent held up well, as did the dipole, but the noise inside the
tent from the flapping nylon walls and rain fly was incredible.
Several times the wind would catch the nylon just right and
it would sound like a gunshot. Sleeping was out of the question
but if I kept the headphones completely covering both ears,
and really, really concentrated, I could still copy code. I
was only able to have one QSO during this period and that was
with NA1XX, Mike, in Weymouth, Mass as the wind was beating
the hell out of the tent. I could increase the RF gain to the
point that I could hear Mike fairly well, but the NC40A's sidetone
was already at its loudest and increasing the RF gain had little
affect on it. I could hear Mike better than I could hear myself!
My logbook reminds me that Mike was also QRP, using his FT101E
turned down to 5 watts and a loop antenna. We exchanged 569/559
reports and chatted until the QSB ended our QSO for us. Actually,
I think the wind started blowing my RF in the other direction.
After an hour or so, the wind left as suddenly
as it came. The woods were now completely dark and quiet - no
crickets, frogs or critters. But forty meters was hopping and
the headphones were filled with both Stateside and DX stations.
Before pulling the plug for the night, I managed to work QRPers
Sam WB5ZJN/8, Lou WB3AAI and several other stations.
My very first introduction to QRP had been
about three years earlier when I put together an HW-9 while
doing shore duty in Groton, Connecticut. As I write this, I've
been trying to think of the words or paragraphs that would allow
me to articulate why it's' fun to be camping out in the woods,
far from commercial power, and be able to communicate via low-power
radio with people on the other side of the country. I can't
do it. If you've never done it, you should try it - the Fun
Factor is QRO.
|
