Crabs n' Bees
Sepcial to The ARS Sojourner
Randy-WJ4P, was anxious to test his new (and I do mean brand new!) K2, along with a vertical that he built for FD. This 20M antenna is 34 feet long, and is known as a "capacitively stretched" vertical. Given its relatively high feedpoint Z (150-200 ohms) and its proximity to the salt water, the Jouster was a tremendous low-loss performer. Tests with a reference 20M inverted vee up 33 feet favored the vertical in most cases.
From our location, the activity on 20M was quite frenetic, with respectable signals throughout the East Coast and Midwest. Not many West Coast stations were heard, though. Still, there were a LOT of stations chasing Bumbleebees the entire four hour period.
15M was a different story. Bill, N8ET was the strongest signal we heard on 15M. The West Coast stations were quite weak on our inverted vee, but their great ears pulled us through. It was especially neat to work the tag-team BB duo, W7EL and AA7QU on 15M...
Randy's new K2 worked fabulously. We all had a big laugh when, toward the end of the contest, the low battery monitor sounded its warning, and the rig kept pumping out 5W even when the battery dropped to 8.8 volts!
A number of visitors stopped by to see what in the world we were up to. They found the operation to be quite intriguing. We even had a large fishing boat to come ashore, whereupon the Captain introduced himself as a ham and wished us well after a nice visit.
It was kind of humorous to walk near the antennas, because there were a zillion tiny crabs running all over the place, and they all jumped into the nearest crabhole whenever we got close. We even had some crabby visitors running around our feet while operating. :-)
The weather was quite hot, but gentle ocean breezes and our screen tent kept us reasonably comfortable, and the mosquitoes weren't all that ferocious. The view was quite pretty, overlooking the Sound and marsh area.
Upon making our last contact right at 5PM, the tide started rolling in, and it was remarkable how quickly our area started filling up with salt water. We got the antennas down and said goodbye to the birds and crabs, telling them that we would be seeing them next year when it's time for the Bumbleebees to start swarming.
We ended up working 62 stations on 20M and 8 stations on 15M--A totally delightful day at the beach!!
72, WQ4RP/BB#17 de WJ4P, AE4YQ, es AA4XX