06/24/2004 | K9AKS Again this year I operated QRP Single Op Portable, but was limited to Saturday plus one hour on six meters Sunday morning. The site was Lover's Leap in Hannibal, MO, which provides a great view out over the Mississippi River to the north and east.

Lover's Leap would be a great rover site, by the way, because the parking lot is within a few feet of the top of the bluff. It is not a great place for a longer-term operation because one has to leave by dark and it is a very busy public place. In anticipation of the crowds, I set up back away from the bluff just off the main parking lot. Many vistors stopped by to chat (all had an uncle or neighbor who is a ham) and more than a few non-thinkers left their muffler-free cars running with stereos blaring while they took in the view!

The highlight of the evening was a wedding held within twenty feet of my car. I had been running cw with the speaker on, and decided to leave it that way [I was there first!] so if anybody recorded the wedding they got plenty of cw in the background.

I ran a IC 746 on 6 and 2 and an FT 736r on 222, 432 and 1296, held to ten watts maximum. Modest yagis were put on a hand-turned twenty foot mast. No operating highlights; flat conditions in general, plus a couple of good hours of Es on 6 mainly to Florida and Texas. But it was enough to generate 91 qsos in 56 grids for a score in excess of 6000.

I'll probably be portable, and weak, from somewhere for the CQ contest in July.

73 -- K9AKS