Sunday, June 26, 2011

IOTA (NA-112) pics / AKA... Emerald Isle, NC

NA-112 ... Activation / Vacation is complete
My 2011 beach vacation is in the record books now. 
As usual nothing ever goes as planned...
and as usual, Murphy's Law  was in effect !!
Radio ops looked good on the first day...
as I put 22 contacts in the log.
Contacts included ... 
S52 .. F6 .. GW4 .. I5
R7 .. XE3 .. M6 .. HB9
QRN was a little high at S4, but no real concern.
When I turned on the FT-857D for the 2nd day 
things had changed for the worse.
My Static level was now S7 to S9 at all times of the day
and the NB on the radio wouldn't work at all on the QRN
I tried every thing I could possibly think of
 to cure the noise problem ... but nothing worked.
I ended up with only 12 more contacts during the week.
for a grand total of 34 contacts.

I never had the chance to operate from the beach ...
So I'm not sure if that would have helped with the QRN
The WX wasn't the best either
 as we had severe thunderstorms on most evenings.
Which is when I had most of my free time to operate.
Forest Fire smoke was also a problem on this trip.
There was a 21,000 acre fire just down the coast in Pender county 
that created lots of smoke in the area, 
depending on the wind direction of course.
At times it was very unpleasant to even be outside.
We ended up leaving for home on Friday morning
so my apologies to those that didn't make it into the log.

73 de N4LA





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