2m Band Opening!

This last night, I had occasion to come down to Merrilville IN, where I was staying for the night before some shows in Crown Point the next day (today now, I guess). Anyway, It was about 9pm, and as I was making the turn off I-80/94 onto I-65, I decided to flip over to 146.52 to see if anyone was around.

I found two guys talking, one who ID'd as Eric, KC9???, and another gentleman (didn't get the name, hopefully he will be sending his contact info via email). Anyway, they were wrapping up and planning to go to 2m AM, when I threw out my call. Both of them came back to me, and were good strong signals. Now I figured they were from the area, but was I in for a surprise...as one said his QTH was Marengo, IL, and the other was from Woodstock, IL. Yup, you are not mis-reading that. After I got the van back on the road, I asked again just to be sure. It was confirmed.

That is nearly 80 miles...and I was on a mobile! Needless to say, that was the hit of my night. If this can happen at the BOTTOM of the sunspot cycle, imagine what it will be like when the sunspots come back... :-)

My new mobile radio!

As some of you might know (and many more might not), I have been having 'issues' with my Icom IC-2710 mobile radio. In short, it overheats...while just sitting there. I haven't had the time or the $ to send it in to Icom and get it fixed- but a good friend Greg, N9CHA had a Yaseu FT-8800 that he let me borrow for awhile. It worked well for me...so well, I ended up buying it from him. Eventually I will get the Icom fixed, and that will probably become Marilyn's mobile rig, or I'll use it the shack...not sure yet.

Anyway, boy does this radio have FEATURES! So many, I will probably never use them all. But it is dual VFO, and is APRS and packet-capable with the data port on the back. So, it will work well for what I need. And Greg had a remote head kit too, so I have some flexibility in mounting it.

I have used this radio well since I have started my travels. Including a rather neat occurance that happened on the way to Merrillville, IN this last night...

Hello again- a little catch-up...

Well, I am sure that some of you have been wondering what I have been up to, probably some of you really haven't cared. It has been a great while since I have posted here, mainly because Ham Radio has taken a back seat to...MY NEW JOB!

In August, I started working for Motivational Productions. This San Antonio-based company is a Christian-based not-for-profit organization that produces and shows multimedia postive character shows in schools all across the country. My job as a Youth Speaker/Tech takes me to IL, IN, MO and IA. I am on the road. A lot. So I haven't spent a lot of time in the shack. I hope to remedy that in the not-to-distant future by adding HF mobile to my capabilities. For now, it's just VHF/UHF.

So in the meantime, let's see if we can catch up with some of the Ham Radio goings on that I HAVE experienced while on the road- here we go...