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.