Upcoming "stuff"

Summer is fast approaching with Memorial Day weekend coming next weekend, here in the US of A. While the day itself has solemn reverence for remembering those who made the Ultimate Sacrifice in service to our country, the weekend also serves as the "unofficial" beginning of Summer.

There's lots to do in the upcoming weeks ahead, and a lot of that involves getting ready for Field Day. I have to get my posterior over to Home Depot to purchase 260 feet of wire for the 160 Meter dipole that I want to build.  Before I do that, I need to get over to Spring Lake Park with a tape measure to see if this is even going to be feasible. No sense of building a 160 Meter dipole of the trees aren't approximately where I need them to be in order to support it.

I also meed to get our Field Day posters finished so that our club members can get them distributed. Filling in that big blank box won't be difficult - getting membership to agree what we want to put there might be.

Sunday, June 9th is the 3rd Annual Cookie Crumble Contest. Huzzah! I have NOTHING scheduled for that Sunday this year. Our normal soup kitchen duty is being performed by another group next month, so the day is free for me and I intend to keep it that way.  I am hoping to set up from Cotton Street Park in town or maybe even Washington Rock again. Both parks have very tall tress in which to hoist up my PAR ENDFEDZ.  I also need to get over to either WalMart or Target for a new bicycle pump. I had mentioned in my post about SPARC's Special Event station that I couldn't use the antenna launcher. It turned out the pressure leak that I was experiencing was because of a hole somewhere in the pump hose. Later on that afternoon, I tried pumping the launcher with a pump the Vadney brothers brought and it worked just fine. It was NOT a leaky Schraeder valve like I had originally suspected.

It's going to be very weird operating these QRP events this year without running into WA8REI, N8XX or N2CX. Those were three call signs that I could usually bank on in QRP events. They will be sorely missed.

Yesterday was a very warm day, so I got the patio furniture cleaned up for the season. Hopefully, that will allow me some chances for outdoor operating this Summer when the weather permits. I'd like to do a lot more experimenting with the magloop to become even more familiar with its "ins and outs". I've used it quite enough to know it's a viable alternative to my permanent antennas; but I need to spend more time with it to become so familiar with it that I know it "like the back of my hand".

I also need to get the Skeeter Hunt Webpage updated for this year; as well as the Skeeter Hunt page of this blog - they pretty much mirror each other.

Wow! That's a lot of stuff to do in and amongst the other "normal" stuff that I have to do every week. It's a good thing that THIS kind of stuff is stuff I enjoy doing!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP -When you care to send the very least!