On the way to the Ham Radio Outlet in Portland we stopped at a Ham swapmeet going on in Chehalis. To this point I had only read about Hamfests or swapmeets and I think this was a pretty typical experience. There were a few booths selling everything from T-shirts to CW keys, to electronic parts. I saw some software that was circa 1995 for sale. Many people had hats on with their names and callsigns. Mike picked up a few things including a Vibroplex bug and a USB keyer.
At the end they were auctioning off some real junk, however the last item was a decent pair of new Harmon Kardon speakers in the box. Mike needed a pair of speakers for his new computer, offered the opening bid of $5, and won. Saved him a trip to find some speakers and you can't go wrong for five bucks.
While we were there we ran into a couple other Hams we know from our area including Jim KM7H and Daniel KL7WM.
By about 11:30 we were back on the road to Portland and arrived at HRO. We looked around and talked with Ron, one of the old salts working the counter. I mentioned my interest in PSK-31 and he told me I was better off sticking with voice and CW before I "went messing around with all that digital stuff". I mentioned I'd already made some PSK-31 contacts so I knew I liked it. He was not overly impressed. He definitely had opinions about what we should buy but overall I liked him. This is a guy who's been doing Ham radio for awhile.
Before returning home to hook up the new toys we met up with my friend Eric who lives in the Portland area and had a nice lunch. It was good to catch up with Eric and enjoy the warm sun. The weather was remarkably warmer and clearer in Portland than it has been in Seattle. And if you're heading down to HRO for any reason there's a good Thai restaurant right in the same complex. It's diagonal across the parking lot from HRO and around a corner. We had a pretty tasty meal there.
Soon we were on our way home. We got back to my place in Kent around 6:30 and began to create the Ham Shack. I worked on moving a desk out of my room into a corner of the living room and disassembling my computer while Mike began stripping wires and connecting the posts so we could get power to the radio. It wasn't long before we were on the air with my 2m J-Pole hitting several local repeaters. The J-Pole was outside on my deck leaning up against the apartment building but we got reports that it sounded pretty good. We also played with a random wire HF antenna strung around my deck. The HF antenna was pretty far from ideal but we did make contact with someone from Canada via CW and some antenna is better than no antenna! Getting out on HF will be one of my upcoming projects.
After Mike left I talked to him all the way from Kent to Woodinville on his mobile Kenwood. We were using the Green Mountain repeater and could hear each other the entire trip. He got a little rough going down the 520 hill towards Avondale but still quite copy-able.
There was no 9:00pm net as the PSRG repeater was being used by the Torchlight parade folks so I had to wait until the morning to check in on the new gear. I had some trouble being understood on the PSRG repeater later Saturday night. I moved the antenna around and it seemed to get better. I've also had reports than my signal isn't as clear as it could be and there was speculation that I was over-driving the mic. I lowered the mic gain to about 25% and that seems to have helped. Treits all have loud voices so I think that might have been part of it.
I'm still working on setting up the ham shack. Next steps include setting up the computer and downloading Ham Radio Deluxe and other software apps.
Nice rig! I'm jealous ;)
ReplyDeleteI AM blessed and spoiled, it's true. Thanks for stopping by Cory!
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