On the beach SSB seemed to go dead for some reason I discovered it was the wire that broke! (Got photo will include). I have the dipole I had up using Anderson power poles to select the bands and one of the wires had come out.... so the dipole became a 1/4 wave with a 4 foot GP... no wonder signals dropped off.
Anyway got the soldering iron out and fixed it and the winds have dropped too now.
I have a second set of dipoles that are whole wires for each band as well.
Feels like taking life in ones hands recharging batteries with hotel mains (brought socket tester and they have a live fault and the earth is 'live') but managing to do it, I got an isolation transformer (1:1 saw builders one in a maintenance room and asked if could borrow it... sure not going to use it until end June was reply...) ... I don't like staying in big hotels usually and this is the Sheraton... still
Africa's idea of 5 star hotel is if you turn tap and water comes out, door
locks, loo flushes and lights work it's 5 star hotel... A/C seems to be none
existent cooler to leave window open sometimes, not too many mosquito's
this time of year! Feels more like a UK 3* to me.
Tomorrow on way to collect the actual licence paperwork from Solicitors (working on emailed copies so far... not a problem) might stop off at the South end of Kariba Avenue, Westfield Junction where I bought a 12V Motorbike battery last time out here and a charger and use that instead for operating. KX3 only so should last for ages.
A couple other operators are supposed to be qrv this week from C5 as they asked me for Rodine's contact info but not run into anyone on air yet.
Activated 10m,12m,15m,17m,20m SSB and CW so far. Need to put the 40/80GP/s up and test before w/e of BERU. Now wind has dropped feeling more confident about night time operating and got a site close to hotel too. 7pm security comes off the beach so not safe to remain on it after that.
No comments:
Post a Comment