Sky Warn Net

This Sunday night was my first SkyWarn net here in Wildwood Florida.  I can here them fine but they could not hear me.  I think I had a very poor antenna connection I will experiment this week and try again next week.  I also have another net tomorrow night and will use that as my first test.  I will have a handheld and a mag mount antenna on my bike.

My HF is working great so now time to focus some on my two meter🧐

40 meter century club contacts

Made several 40 meter century club members on their net.  I will be looking into joining them 1/19/20.  They were great relaying my weak signal to others trying to make contact with me.  This group will teach me alot🤓

Current primary radio setup

Here you see my dremal box for headset go bag for g90 with a 20 meter dipole antenna in it.
On the table is my headset 7 SLA battery in small amp case.  My G 90, behind it you see my white car jump battery for my 2 meter radio which fits in the ammo can it is on with a short antenna.  My 2 meter battery and antenna all fit nicely in the ammo can for a go box🧐

Dead auto battery cause I left the AC on

Could not find my car keys!  Then I remembered I left it on AC while tuning an antenna 3 hours ago🙁. Thankfully I use car jump batteries to run my radios so time.  Today I was monitoring 2 meters, no contacts🙁. So I took off the 8amp hour jumper battery and put it to the auto😎. It started on the first try👍

The 8 amp battery started out 100% full and showing 12.4volts when I turned on the radio 3 hours ago  after the.car jump it wS at 70% and 12.2 volts😎

First contact on 40 meters

Got my 40 meter hamsticks worked out with the help of another HAM.  Today 1/17/20 I made a contact with net controller for the 7240 club.  From pittsgrove NJ to my site is about 975 miles, not bad for my first contact with the hamstick😎

Also cut two 1x1s and stacked to raise the front of the G90 for better viewing.  Found along the roadside works great🤓

11 Meter Check-up

I am working 20 and 40 meters almost daily on ham sticks and have not made a contact over 1500 miles with them.  I only have 20 watts max power and am up only 23 feet so that’s not a bad range.  When I take the time to set up my inverted V wire antenna I have reached 3000 miles with the peak of the V up 30 feet in a tree so I am happy for now.  Today I have been playing with my 11 meter Uniden 980SSB made no contacts but did hear some area traffic on channel 19USB.  Here is a photo.

Walking stick 20 meter

 Above is my five foot PVC that carries one of my 20 meter ham sticks.  So I do not need to take my 20 meter off the RV roof when visiting friends with no tree to hang my inverted V.

Update on ham sticks and inverted V antenna

Update on my inverted V  and ham sticks now that I have used them for a bit.  Range has settled down a bit with ham sticks normal max range is up to 2300 miles for the inverted V it is 3000 miles.

Propagation has a huge impact on HF communications so ranges can change by the minute in real time.