01/22/2008 | K1WHS My QTH is located in Southern Maine, and known for its balmy temperatures in January, coupled with light breezes. Yeah right!! It was just plain COLD and WINDY on Sunday. I had very little time to devote to the January Contest, but wanted to get on at least one band for a few hours, so decided to haul some 144 gear up the hill in the back yard to my remote hamshack. We had lotsa snow, so driving up there was out. I ended up carrying the stuff on my back for 1/2 mile through the woods up to the unheated shack. The K2 exciter was nice and light, but the 85 pound pipe pieces for the new generator exhaust system was a bear to drag up. I did manage to get the exhaust all plumbed in on Saturday around noon, but made the mistake of misaligning the exhaust flapper the wrong way so that all the exhaust gases were blown back into the shed. (Another Homer Simpson moment for me.) Some more trips up and down to get the exciter, wattmeter, mics, cans etc. etc. and I would be all set to go. The temperature was a tad nippy with the thermometer hovering at 12 degrees on both Saturday and Sunday at mid day. I managed to start the diesel power source, and the shack slowly warmed up as the electric heaters started pumping out heat. I operated a little over three hours at the start of the contest, and another 1 1/2 hours on Sunday morning, but the wind chill was pretty bad on Sunday with high winds that made my stroll through the woods more like an ordeal!
The band was quite poor for both of the periods that I was QRV. The biggest problem was the power line noise, which at times made hearing anything quite difficult. With weak signals, it was hard for any DX stations to be heard through the din of the power line arcing. For DX, I worked a few around Washington DC (K1RZ was very loud with his new array!) plus some stations out to the West were worked in FN02 TNX to K8ZES, but things were weak and watery for the most part. I did not try any nightime skeds. I really had no time available for that. I had a blast just getting on the air at all. The snow was beautiful. The skies were clear. It was just pretty darn cold and windy. I wish I could have spent more time at it, but 5 hours was all I could spare. Even if I had more time to spend, I was very short of diesel fuel up there. I had about enough fuel for not much more time than I was able to spend. I probably had 15 gallons total available. I refuse to haul diesel fuel on my back! The good news is that the new diesel generator seems to make good electrons of the proper frequency, as the 144 MHz rig seemed to like it, and the voltage regulation looked just fine on my VOM. The bottom line was that I had a great time. If it was easy, it would not have been so much fun. I ended up with about 130 Qs in 22 sections on 144. -- K1WHS