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An Untimely Sample of Winter Weather |
80 Meter Dipole Feed Line in the Snow Covered Trees |
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An Untimely Sample of Winter Weather |
80 Meter Dipole Feed Line in the Snow Covered Trees |
This was my 16th consecutive year operating a CQP county expedition from Mammoth Lakes in Mono County. On Wednesday I made the 300 mile drive from my home QTH to Mammoth...as I crossed from Inyo County into Mono County I noticed a nice new sign that said "Welcome to Mono County - Wild by Nature." As it turned out nature was wild, mainly while I was trying to setup my wire antennas in the pine trees. On Thursday the wind was really strong which made it very difficult to make my sling shot launched guy lines hit the mark. It took all day just to get my three dipoles up. I didn't even try to get my 3 element 15M wire beam up...too much wind. We'll, I thought, 15M will probably be as bad as 10M, so I might as well just go with a 15M dipole this year.
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Plenty of Snow hits the Deck |
The Low 20s |
On Friday I planned to launch my 3
element 20M wire beam, but it snowed all day and the temperature never got out
of the low 20s F. Since I was still wiped out from Thursday's effort, I decided
to just go with my dipoles...too much snow, cold and wind. At least the nap felt
great!
Saturday morning I went outside to see how my dipoles survived Friday's snow
storm. The first thing I notice was a large bear paw impression in the snow on
my porch. I didn't actually see the bear on my porch, but on Monday as I was
packing up, one of my neighbors told me that they saw a very large bear by my
porch, so that keeps my recent streak of bear encounters during CQP going for
another year. Lucky I didn't decide to go outside at the wrong time.
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Bear Tracks on the Porch |
Warning Sign above the
Front Door and the |
Saturday morning, before CQP started I
called CQ on 15M...nothing. I moved to 20M and called CQ and had a nice QSO with
KH6LC. Since last year Hawaii was my last mult with one minute left in CQP, I
made sure that I would get the HI mult this year by chatting with KH6LC for a
couple more minutes so I could log him as my first QSO. Of course this year I
had a bunch of HI QSOs on all the bands.
I stayed on 20M SSB for a while, but soon confirmed that a my 20M dipole was not
going to be that great on SSB, so I spent most of the afternoon on 20M CW. I
never could quite catch any of the 15M openings. Sunday morning I was surprised
by a call on 20M SSB from VY1WR who gave me his #39 and the NT mult, but since I
never found ND and SK for my last two mults...no sweep this year. I finished
with over 450 QSOs below my Mono County record set last year...guessed I really
missed my wire beams and 15M propagation.
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The Official Bottle of
CQP 15th Place Wine from 2006 Returns to Mono County for a Photo Shoot |
As always, CQP was lots of fun and it
was nice to have eye ball and CQP QSOs with the other active Mono County hams,
W6SX and W7AB/W7FD at W6M.
Thanks to all!
73,
Jim, W6KC @ W6ML, Mammoth Lakes, Mono County
Be sure to checkout the on-line logs from the CQP operations in Mono County.
