Friday, September 08, 2006

NA-148 Georges Island Again

I wanted to make at least one more trip out to the Boston Harbor Islands before it got too cold. Unfortunately, I had lost a month from all the distractions with the car accident and now the season is quickly coming to a close. My plan is to get out there Saturday (September 9) and be on the air from 1400 to 1700 GMT.
My plan is to to take the following equipment:
  • ICOM 7000 setup - I've got a Pelican 1510 case filled with the "right stuff". This will be the first real workout for the new radio.
  • Force-12 Sigma-5 - Thus far I've only used my Buddipole on the island so this will be a change. Then again, one of the reasons for buying this antenna was to see how it would perform in situations precisely like this.
  • New 17Ah batteries - I had purchased two sealed GSM batteries (model ES17-12) from eBatteriesToGo and have had them on the smart charger topping them off. I hope to get a full four or five hours of operating time using one or two of these batteries.
  • shelter, lunch, water - Sandy will be joining me on the trip so wrangling all this stuff should be a little easier than when I tried to do it by myself.

The upshot of this is: I will be QRO compared to previous trips with 50 watts instead of 5 output. I have not yet received word from the Boston Harbor Islands National Park, Department of Conservation and Recreation on my request to tap into their power generator so I could run the full 100 watts and run the computer. Alex Hall, the gentleman I talked to about this possibility, indicated it would be better if I tried doing this late in the season when traffic on the island was smaller. If Alex comes through, I'll do at least one more trip.
I hope to work you all from NA-148 tomorrow!

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