Last weekend, I celebrated my 66th birthday and my 50th anniversary as a ham (my first licensed was dated July 16, 1971, my 16th birthday), at my in-laws place in Afton, VA. Afton’s a beautiful spot. It’s up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, near Shenandoah National Park, and while it was very hot while we were there, we had a really nice time. We visited Luray Caverns (which, honestly, is bit of a tourist trap, but worth seeing anyway), went to a winery, ate some great BBQ from a roadside stand that’s only open on weekends, and celebrated my birthday with my first piñata.
On Saturday, I got to operate a little. My in-laws’ house has a deck with a pergola off the back of the house that sits up quite high. I was able to tie the center insulator of my 66-ft. doublet to one of the pergola’s beams and operate the antenna as an inverted vee. I tied some twine to the ends of the doublet’s elements and to some pieces of wood to form the vee, ensuring that the ends were at least three feet off the ground.
This setup worked pretty well. My KX-3’s antenna tuner quickly tuned up the antenna, and I made six contacts over the course of the next few hours, while I conversed with my in-laws and impressed them with my CW technique. My brother-in-law, who is a chemical engineer, actually did seem interested in what I was doing.
One thing that got a big laugh was the effect my transmissions had on a touch lamp:
One nice thing about operating from there was the low noise level. I have a pretty low noise level at my home QTH, but it was even lower up in the mountains.
As I mentioned earlier, it was pretty hot there last weekend. While I was mostly in the shade while operating, there was a period of time when my torso was in the sun. That evening, I noticed that I had gotten a bit of a sunburn on my stomach. The moral of the story is to be careful when operating outdoors not to be in the sun too long, and even though your head might be covered, other parts can get burnt.
We spent Sunday in Richmond, VA, where my in-laws live normally. On Monday, we drove in to Washington, DC to visit the Spy Museum and the the Mall. The Spy Museum had several exhibits of interest to radio enthusiasts, including tiny radios and transmitters used by spies. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much technical detail in the exhibits, but it was interesting nonetheless.
Overall, it was a great vacation, and now I’m ready to start on my next 50 years of ham radio.
UPDATE
In today’s mail, I received, not one but two QSL cards from Andy, KD9KHA, one of the guys I worked last Saturday. He writes:
Glad to get you in the log! I used Audible to listen to you book, The CW Geek’s Guide to Having Fun with Morse Code. I listened to it while farming, and it helped motivate me to learn it. Going to start the CW Academy Basic Course this fall.
He continued:
Since it was the Support Your Parks summer event this weekend, I thought I’d include my POTA QSL card.
I always love hearing from readers, and I’ll be putting my card in the mail tomorrow.
Rob W4ZNG says
Congratulations Dan, and many happy returns!