We set up at the the of the hill, and I loaned Bill my SD-20 pole for one end of his 40m dipole and he threw the other end in a tree.

I set up a Pac-12 for 30m and 40m and Bill loaned me some wire to clip onto it, and that got it to load up to about 2:1 on 60M with the 40M coil and Z100. I talked to Alan W6BZQZ, who suggested I try the balun he designed. I did, and at the 50 Ohm (1:1) position it seemed to get a better match, according to the Z100, but there wasn't a big change in the received results according to Alan. He could something at 1 Watt, but we couldn't have a QSO until I used the K5OOR HFPacker Amplifier off of the 9.5AH NiMH cells I got from HamStop, and that worked fine.

I didn't make any contats on 40 or 30...it seemed like 60M was the only band where we could work anybody, though Bill started (but couldn't finish) a couple of QSOs on 7109.

A tarantula came through and caused a bit of excitement; I encouraged it to leave and it did. It was so camouflaged I was afraid we would step on it in a clump of the dry grass.

We packed it up before sunset and headed to a local restaurant.

Here are some pictures that Bill took.

- posted by Leigh @ 00:07 z