New set up

I changed things around in the Jeep. This was the old set up for my little QYT-K8900D. I had it mounted to a board on the side of the center console. I put Velcro over the nuts on the console side of the board, so there would be no ugly scratches. The board extended back a ways and was held in place, quite snugly, by friction between the seat and console.

The sad thing is that W2LJ's eyes ain't what they used to be. It became hard to see what frequency the rig had stopped on when the scan function happened upon a QSO. At certain times of the day when it was especially bright outside, the display became even harder on these ol' peepers of mine.

It worked well enough, except for those drawbacks, which were unfortunate but not all that prohibitive. In actuality, I could have lived with it, but then one day I happened to run across this on eBay:

It's a bracket that fits in the cup holder. Perfect, as the cup holder was only being used for holding extra coins and the microphone, anyway.  The rig is now closer to my eyes and I can now easily see what repeater the radio has stopped on when a conversation is taking place.

If you're wondering - no, it does not get in the way of the gear shifter, nor does it prevent access to the parking brake release, even though the angle of the camera may make it look that way in the photo. I was a bit skeptical that road vibration and bumps in the roads would cause this bracket to jostle around from where I had set it, but no, so far it's been rock solid. Not bad for a piece of plastic that cost me about 20 bucks (with shipping).

My only complaint is that the microphone hanger that came with this brackety-thing is a hook type. The microphone supplied with the rig has no loop - just a mushroom type of button that protrudes from the back. The radio did come with a compatible microphone hanger clip, but the friction holding the mic in it's clip is so great that the clip HAS to be screwed in place somewhere on the dash, and I don't want to put holes in anything. You never know what wiring is hiding right behind the surface of anything in cars these days.

The microphone will call the other cup holder its home, unless Marianne is with me and she wants to use that one for its intended purpose.  For that brief amount of time, the microphone can ride shotgun in my lap, or on my seat next to my leg.

I know what you might be thinking - what's LJ doing with a piece of Chinese ......... in his car? Why not a Yaesu or an Icom?  The answer is that, like Ivory Soap, I end up listening for 99 and 44/100ths percent of the time. I rarely speak into the mic, unless it's to check into a net or perform some kind of ARES or CERT function. The receiver in this little rig is as good as any, and the 10 or 25 Watts that it puts out for such brief amounts of time serve the purpose. So why pay hundreds? I can put those $$$$ towards something I really want! (I'd rather be on HF anyway!)

While I'm thinking about HF - a few other things:

1)  The log summaries for Skeeter Hunt are coming in like gangbusters! There's still a week to go. I'm hoping that we come closer to 50% participation this year. There were some new callsigns that entered this year and from the comments I've read, it seems just about everyone had a good time!

2) My results:

Larry - W2LJ - NJ

Skeeter #181 - All CW

Single Op

Skeeter QSOs - 27

Non-Skeeter QRP QSOs - 0

Non-Skeeter QRO QSOs - 0

S/P/Cs - 14

Station Class Multiplier X4

Bonus - The number of "Bonus Skeeters" that I worked - 3

not bad for limping around with suspect batteries, hunting and pouncing with only  2.5 Watts!

3) Speaking of the batteries - the little SLA looks like it's going to be fine. The larger SLA looks a bit on the iffy side. The Powerwerx battery indeed looks to be shot.

To end things today - we had our first "kiss" of Autumn this morning and I guess that's appropriate for the 1st day of September. When I awoke this morning and looked at the weather station display it was 55F (13C). It hasn't been that cool in the morning since last May - maybe even April.

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!