FYBO 2010 - In the Woods But Little to Show

On the Friday before FYBO, I took off at noon to scout out a new operating site.  Similar to 2000 and 2004 I chose the mountains near Deary, ID.  There wasn't much snow and the forest dirt road had only occassional patches of snow.  I found two good looking sites less than a mile from where I had to park the truck.  Neither had enough snow for a snow pit, but I'd be back out in the woods.  After three years of being home bound, I was ready.

I got up at 4:30 am Saturday, had a bowl of oatmeal, and headed out in the dark.  By the time I got to the parking spot, it was getting light.  I put all the gear on the game carrier and headed up the road.  The picture shows the game carrier loaded up for an Adventure Society Flight of the Bumble Bees.  It had about the same amount of gear for FYBO, roll-up table, K2, wire dipoles, coax, ladder line, lawn chair, slingshot, and spares of most all that stuff.

The wheels are nice on bare ground.  In the snow, they bogged down.  After a lot of tugging through the occassional snow patches, I got to the second site and began setting up.  Both shots into the trees went well and I started to unroll the 80 m dipole.  The plan was to feed it with ladder line so I could be on bands from 80 to 10.  About half way through I noticed that the space between the trees was not nearly long enough for the dipole.  Rats!  Roll it up and unroll the 20 m dipole.  Much better until both of the support lines dropped down several branches.  Rats, again!  I guess I did a poor job of getting the line over a big enough limb.  Up went the dipole to 30 feet in the center.  Not as good as I would like, but good enough for FYBO.

OK, set up the table and hook up the K2, paddles, coax, and battery.  Bad luck continued.  The battery cable wasn't really long enough, so improvise that.  I put the chair in place under the table.  Hum, why is this chair so low?  At that point I just decided to operate anyway.

In short order I worked Jim, KK6MC and KI0G, Bob.  They were the only ones I could hear on 20 m.  What else could go bad?  How about the breeze kicking up and blowing snow and water off the trees and onto the rig and paddles?  Shades of 2001 when the paddles shorted out!   A poor day was getting worse.  After several more minutes of that and no signals, I surrendered and took it all down, packed up, and headed for the truck.

One of the lowest QSO totals for FYBO, but I did get away from the house and back out in the woods.  Also, there is always next year.