07/21/2003 | N8IA Operated 1B solo effort from the family farm near Howell, MI

I got some setup started including the operating tent on Friday night. The Michigan Challenge Balloonfest was taking place about 10 miles west of the QTH, and an hour before sunset I was visited by a number of balloons all aound me!

I finished my setup by the 1800Z start time on Saturday. The station is an Icom 735, Yaesu FT100, a 40 meter vertical, with 8 quarterwave radials, held up by a 33 foot collapsable fiberglass pole, and a G5RV up in the trees at the "great" height of 35 feet.

It was very windy Saturday afternoon, and my 40M vertical looked like I was trying to land a shark! It fell over a couple times, so just had to run out and tip it right back up! Had to QRT for a while early Saturday evening for thunderstorms, but was back in business by sunset, and it turned out to be a beautiful clear night. It was great having both the G5RV and the vertical to use on 40M. I kept switching between them, using the G5RV for contacts out to several hundre miles, and the vertical, for the longer haul paths. The vertical worked quite well out to the West coast and Hawaii in the middle of the night. I finally QRT'd and got some sleep at sunrise. I got back on the air around 1400Z and finished up primarily on 40M CW. I had my best rates the last few hours, the rate meter on CT was showing in the mid 80's per hour.

My goal was 700 QSOs, I made nearly 600, but the condx stunk on 10/15 and I had to QRT for WX on Saturday evening, so overall the operation was sucessful!

73
Dave - N8IA - 1B Michigan -- N8IA