FYBO 2004 - In the Snow Without a Paddle

It snowed all Friday night and well into the early morning hours of Saturday. After an hour drive into the mountains on snow packed roads where I passed a car that had flipped onto its roof, I was ready to begin the 1/2 mile snow shoe trek to the operating site that I've used for three other FYBOs. The temperature was just below freezing and the snow was wet and heavy. I had no trouble placing the first line into a tree with my trusty slingshot. The second line wasn't so easy because the tree ate the line and weight. I simply got out the baseball in a small stuff sack with line attached and threw it into the tree. With this arrangement the dipole would look more like a sloper since the line was about 60 feet up the slingshot tree and only 20 feet up the baseball tree. After pulling up the 20 m dipole to about 30 feet I dug a snow pit. It takes only a few minutes to dig and is a great improvement on simply sitting on the ground because you have what amounts to a chair to sit on.

I got out the K2 and set it up on a board I'd carried in on the sled that held all the equipment. Whoops! Problem here. No cable from the paddles to the K2. Ok, back in the case goes the K2 and out comes its little brother the KX1. No need to bother with a cable for attaching that paddle. I used a Palm and NK0E's GoLog program for logging. I had brought a Palm keyboard, but there wasn't enough room on the board for both the KX1 and the Palm keyboard. I used the Palm alone with Graffiti writing.

 The first hour I made 10 Qs then took a short lunch break of tomato soup. In the next hour I made 10 more Qs. Contacts ranged from CA to NJ with two AK as well. Weather for both hours was 1) sun breaks, 2) light drizzle, 3) light snow, then 4) not so light snow. Rather than sit out the not-so-light snow I took everything down and headed for the truck. It was just a short operating time, but I had a good time anyway.