Wednesday - Today was a little bit different. On a RV/ham radio FB group, someone posted that they were snowbirding for the first time and were in Coolidge. This is the town where we stayed last year near the Casa Grande ruins. I met him in Coolidge as his wife was at her job and had the truck. We just went down the street to Macdonalds for coffee. Interesting hearing what he was running for an HF (high frequency) radio and antenna in his 5th wheel. Before we knew it, two hours had passed talking about RVs and radios.
I still haven’t ventured into HF for a number of reasons. How to mount a tuneable antenna that needs a ground plane on a fiberglass skinned RV being one reason. The picture is from last January at Quartzfest and is an example of a portable HF antenna.
Thursday - Is it odd to go to Ikea for lunch? Apparently not. There were more people in the cafeteria than there were in the store. Bridget is flying into Phoenix this afternoon and if you know me, I would rather be early than late. It’s normally about 45 minutes from Casa Grande to the airport but earlier today, Waze said 85 minutes due to an accident. There seems to be a lot of accidents around here. Just yesterday while returning from Coolidge, a pickup turned left in front of oncoming traffic causing panic stops for the cars ahead of me. The driver of the pickup was oblivious with her phone to her ear…
The Alaska Air flight was early. Picked up some coffee and waited just outside of security. Once you get into the terminal, the airport feels “small town” but outside, it’s a zoo.
Interesting mobile ham setup. I used the class C motorhome's chassis as ground plane and mounted a vertical with changeable coils to the rear bumper. Worked ok. I think I had coils for four HF bands, in fact I think the mast and coils are still around here (somewhere). Cee and I (mostly Cee) had a good visit with Bridget Tuesday.
ReplyDeleteMan that's a lot of hardware to carry around just to talk to people you don't know.... ;)
ReplyDelete