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Comrade Nathan. One of the few people excited at the thought of a winter camping trip... although we did get off easy -- the weekend before this trip the temperature was around -3 F. Much thanks is due Nathan as he knew where to go and what to do for the trip.
Nathan and I went to college together at IUPUI (Purdue University at Indianapolis) where we both studied Electrical Engineering. He doesn't have his ham license yet, although this will hopefully be remedied shortly. After getting home from this trip I lent him all my ham radio books. |
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If you were one of our 18 contacts then you've already seen this picture. This is the front of the QSL card we sent out. On our trip we saw about 3 other parties on the trails. One of the fellows we met was also a ham radio operator (I've misplaced his call) and he took this photo of Nathan and I together.
In this picture you can see both of us, the ham gear, and the coax leading up to our antenna. The antenna was put up about 36 feet due to a beautiful throw with a hammer over a tree limb about 38 feet up... the coax is 42 feet long (by no mistake or random chance is it 42) and you can see how much slack there is -- so my numbers are probably right, maybe a bit conservative? |
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| The whole hammer ordeal kills me. Here we go hiking - you would think I'd try to pack light, but no -- I take along a hammer for the sole purpose of throwing it over a tree branch with a rope attached so I can pull up the coax. At home I went through a mock run of setting up the radio equipment and spent an hour putting up the antenna. I first threw rocks, sticks, etc. with the rope attached trying to get the rope over a good 35 foot high tree limb to no avail. I then tried making some sort of scaffolding to get the antenna itself up to no avail. I then tried a big wrench - close... almost made it. Finally I used a hammer (it must be the leverage) and was able to toss it over the limb... and that's the story of how I took a hammer along on the trip. Perhaps I will experiment with tying rocks onto sticks so I can get the same leverage as a hammer but saved from the hammer fate in the future. |
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I include this last photograph as a lesson of what not to do with a camera that has a flash at night. We were quite blinded for about 10 seconds after this exposure. So for future reference, never take a picture of yourself night with a flash 3 ft from your face. As you can see from our wide open eyes and huge pupils, the flash caught us by surprise.
I think this picture was taken sometime after our failed attempt to build a fire... perhaps I shouldn't mention we failed to make a successful fire, but I'd bet that 90% of you (or more) would also be unable to get a fire going given the conditions we were in and the equipment we had... |
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