02/04/2005 | WC4J Well blizzard blues set in early thursday as I and Barry WA4HR packed for the weekend adventure. We quickly scrapped the trip to Reddish Knob at 4300 ft for the back up site Fairfax County transfer station at 600ft, still one of the highest areas in Northern VA. Started out Saturday morning from Front Royal Va in the snow in my 1973 school bus recently aquired from one of the big guns when they upgraded to a bigger bus, as the snow started the cell phone started too. "Hello? hi this is so and so I think I'm going to skip the test due to the snow." seemed to be the common exchange.

Well Me and Barry set up the 3 towers and antennas ran the coax and fired off the generator. We both believed this was to be the worse part, blizzard conditions with wind chills in the teens, you could not touch any metal for more than 30 seconds and let go. Boy where we in for a surprise when we tore down Sunday the 50mph winds with no protection caused instant frostbite to any uncovered skin, and twisted / bent one of our 20 ft masts placeing the 220 and 6m antennas at 90 degrees diffrence. Besides the weather all went well the newly rebuilt furnace kept the bus at a warm 80 degrees and the microwave kept the hot chocalate and soup running. Uncle murphy visted early with the failure of the Icom 211, but we came prepared and switched 2m to the ft-736r.

Thanks to all who helped with the outfitting of the bus in record time especially John WA1STU, Tom KR4DO, George K4GVT, Barry WA4HR, Bill N3OH, and Ken WB4ZOH. And a special thanks to the Grid Pirates for all the great help in the design of the station I only hope to score in your range one day!!!!!!

73 de Brian WC4J

2005 January sweeps ops WC4J WA4HR
http://home.comcast.net/~wc4j/jan2005.html -- WC4J