Spring Hike to Hill Village
April 2015
This is the first warm day of the year... 62F. Hooray! Judy and I
went down
to Old Hill Village. It was glorious! I worked four stations in the
Georgia
QSO Party and one station in Bulgaria. I was using the new MTR from
KD1JV.
Imagine walking on bare ground for the first time in four months.
It's beautiful!
We walked down by Needle Shop Brook. It was singing a loud spring
song as
it rushed and foamed down the steep ravine toward the Pemigewasset
River.
There was still snow and ice here in the deep woods. But at the
bottom of the
hill, where the fields opened up and the sunshine worked its
magic... there
was bare earth and the fields were largely free of snow.
We hiked about a half mile to the north until we reached an old, red
maple tree alongside
the road. Here there was even an old stretch of cracked sidewalk
from the 1940s. I set up
under this wonderful tree. In the full sunshine it was nearly 80F.
Wow!
I used the new MTR designed by KD1JV. It's being sold completely
assembled by LNR Precision.
It's a perfect piece of gear and as small as it gets. It's good for
3 bands... 40, 30 and 20 meters. I used
it on 20 meters with a 33 foot piece of wire with the Par matchbox.
I used 8 AA NiMh cells. I think
the output was about 3 watts.
The first station I worked was Mike, W0VTT in the SKCC sprint. As I
tuned down a bit, I found a handful of
stations working the Georgia QSO Party. Here's my log:
12 Apr-15 1850 14.051 W0VTT CW 599 599
MN
12 Apr-15 1854 14.044 AD4ES CW 599 599
GA
12 Apr-15 1907 14.046 N4I CW 599 599
GA
12 Apr-15 1915 14.045 W4FOA CW 599 599
GA
12 Apr-15 1917 14.046 AA4LR CW 599 599
GA
12 Apr-15 1940 14.012 LZ2HR CW 599 599
Bulgaria
At the last I worked LZ2HR in Bulgaria. He was working the Yuri
Gagarin DX Contest. Reluctantly, I
packed up. But what a beautiful walk back. I felt like I'd just
escaped from four months in jail. The sky,
the warmth, the smell of fresh earth was over-powering. Tomorrow,
it's supposed to be 70F.