Last week, I’d signed up to do a turn as W1AW/8 as part of the ARRL’s Volunteers on the Air operating event. I had planned to operate 40-meter CW on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings. That was the plan, anyway.
On Tuesday, I simply forgot about operating. My bad.
On Wednesday, I wasn’t really sure how much I’d be able to operate because an ice storm started several hours before I was to begin my operations. I use a non-resonant, 80-meter doublet antenna on 40 meters, and when it gets wet or icy, the antenna can sometimes become untunable.
After dinner, about 6:30 pm, I looked out at the antenna and noticed that there was already some ice on both the elements and the feedline. Even so, I went down to the shack and was able to tune the antenna, so I started calling CQ. Almost immediately, I started getting calls, and the signals were almost all S9, so I thought this is going to go well.
While I was operating, I did notice the SWR vary from time to time, but I could usually adjust the tuning to get it back down to a reasonable value. About 8:00 pm, though, the SWR just went through the roof, and I had to shut down for the night. Overall, I made 80 contacts in about an hour and a half. That’s not a bad rate considering that I had to slow down for many operators, and I took some extra time to swap comments with operators that I knew.
Even though I had to quit operating, I was glad that our power remained on. This being such a bad storm, I thought there was a good chance our power would go out.
Thursday, the temperature rose into the mid-40s, and all the ice melted. I thought to myself that we were in the clear now, and I was looking forward to the evening session. Boy, was I wrong. Before I could get started, our power went out, and we became two of the hundreds of thousands of people who lost power here in Michigan.
The power was out for nearly 72 hours. My wife and I toughed it out in the house for the first two days, but it got so cold in the house, that we got a hotel room on Saturday night. I’m still not sure how we managed to do that with so many who were still without power in the Ann Arbor area on Saturday.
Fortunately, our power was restored on Sunday afternoon, and we’re once again warm and cozy here. And, I’m back on the air. We used to have very reliable power service here, but it has deteriorated quite a bit over the last 10 years. So much so, that some folks here in Ann Arbor are talking about setting up a municipal utility and dumping DTE Energy, the current provider. In either case, I’m thinking a generator might be my next purchase.
Dave New, N8SBE says
We were out from 7:02pm on Wednesday to 4:40pm on Sunday. Whew! I have a 5500W portable generator, and a bucket of extension cords, that I run all over the house. That kept the sump pump running, the freezer, the frig, and the gas furnace. We have a gas stove, and gas water heater. Then I ran cords to our respective home offices (the XYL and I both work from the home) and to the basement ham shack, which also powered the fiber-to-the-home modem and my eero mesh Wi-Fi network. Finally, I powered the entertainment system, so the DirecTV DVR would continue to record our shows, and we could continue streaming services on the TV.
I keep saying I need to get a transfer switch and outlet installed, so I can just plug in a 30A genset cord. Maybe after this outage, I’ll get around to it. It would be so much easier than dealing with all the extension cords and plugging/unplugging everything at the start and end of the power outage.
73,
— Dave, N8SBE
Mike says
Good morning Dan, yes ice and really any antenna don’t mix very well. I have a Hustler 4BTV and am able to take it down in the event of an ice storm. As for the power outage I have a 1200 watt generator and did what Dave N8SBE (above comment) wants to do and that is I installed a transfer switch. Power goes out here the generator is started via a remote key fob. Then its just a matter of flipping the circuit breakers onto the generator. I leave one circuit breaker on line power so I know when the power comes back on.
Yes a good quality generator is a very good investment.
73,
Mike
VE9KK
Mike says
Don, I am retired from a very large power company and when the power company was public we had no reliability issues. It sold (short-term thinking money-hungry politicians) and became private and then the lucrative bonus structures kicked in along with poor reliability. Just one example and I will say 73.
Politicians wanted accountability from private power for low reliability and the power company changed their very very lucrative bonus structure to include….if “X” amount of customers lose power our bonus will drop substantially for that month or that quarter. Joe public thought “great accountability and this will keep the grid up to date. Well, what Joe public did not know was “X amount of customers” also had a new meaning! For example….one large condo has let’s say 2,000 customers and let’s say 10 condos go down in an outage that is 20,000 customers….not anymore its now has 10 customers, and each condo is ONE customer. Or a 5-mile square residential block is ONE customer. The bottom line is still lots out of power BUT the bonus structure stays the same!
73,
Mike
VE9KK