Last night’s conference call between team members was brief, mostly reviewing open items we’d like to have completed soon. They include:

• Getting those LoTW accounts established
• Creating eQSL accounts
• Creating QRZ entries for our new call signs
• Executing the model release forms and general agreements, and
• Getting the last of the pictures up on the biography page

There were plenty of other of other things we could have covered, but only four of seven members were able to make the call, and most of us are either traveling or tied up with business or family commitments for the next couple of weeks. That was to be expected, and planned for during my early conversations with Budd Drummond this Summer. The last couple of weeks of the year are always tough.
Our next conference call is scheduled for 7 January 2007. At that point, there will be only 3 weeks until our departure. That’s not much time! Hopefully, all the member will have completed their equipment spreadsheets by then so we may begin the process of reviewing the equipment, weeding out duplication, and identifying missing components. We did make one decision last night: I will be bringing my two bags plus the big golf case. Southwest allows three bags for domestic travel so getting it to Orlando should be no problem. Once there, another team member, who is only bringing one personal bag, will count the golf bag as his own (so, on average, we both have 2 bags). The golf bag will be used to ship all the long items such as 16 foot masts, tripods, fishing poles, and other awkwardly-sized pieces. We still need to do the spreadsheets and do this minute planning--but this strategic bit of planning (having at least one case for long items) should help in general.
The microphone mentioned yesterday has arrived. I’ll try to test it in the next couple of days. That was one of the last pieces for the audio capture planning.
Finally, I made a trip up to Ham Radio Outlet today looking for some of the parts I had listed from yesterday’s exercise. I found some, but not all. I was relieved to find one part in particular, though: a spare power cable for the IC-7000. This radio has a four pin molex connector instead of the usual 6 pin harness. I had only one of these (the one that came with the radio) and thought that was probably tempting fate too much. I’ll cut this new one relatively short, put power poles on it, and make it be the primary cable. The original cable will now become the spare. I can’t bring duplicates or backups of everything, but the light stuff, especially something that would be really difficult to replace or improvise on-island, will get a look.