Back on the air again, again

[NQ6U]

Just got back on the air after a month. I had to pull my antenna down while we did some boat maintenance but I put it up today and, while I was at it, wired my radio directly to the boat’s house battery instead of using a 60AH LiFePo, which freed up the space on the floor and hid all the cabling.

It all went pretty smoothly — I even found a gap I could use to run the wires down into the engine room so I didn’t have to drill any holes — but when I hit the power button, nothing happened.

A little poking around soon revealed the problem: the house battery is a group of four six volt batteries connected in pairs then wired in series for 12V, which I should have recognized just by looking at them. But I put it down to angering the electron gods with my hubris when I closed up the engine room hatch and turned off the lights before I tested it.

[KG4CGC]

Glad to have you back on the air, 6U.

[WZ7U]

Good deal Carl. What bands are you good on now?

[NQ6U]

Good deal Carl. What bands are you good on now?

Well, the antenna will tune 160-10m but I don't think it’s very effective below 40m. It’s good on 20m and just kills on 15m. I did a quick test on 15m FT8 at 30W after I got everything together yesterday — one CQ and I made QSOs with three JA stations and a guy on the east coast.

[W3WN]

10 and 15 are/were wide open this morning. With the CQWW starting at 0000 Z tonight, should be loads to work this weekend.

Go go have Fun!

[N8YX]

Listening on our 10M hangout frequency, along with the Bowl. Signals on the latter are almost pinning the R-71's S meter.

[NQ6U]

Listening on our 10M hangout frequency, along with the Bowl. Signals on the latter are almost pinning the R-71's S meter.

Yeah, the bands are really hot these days. They’re hearing me in Europe on 15m FT8 this morning, which can be difficult to pull off from here on the Left Coast when conditions are not perfect and you’re using a very rudimentary antenna like mine.