I think I covered the saga of my HAM licensing from the Technician class in Yuma to the General class ticket in Tucson. Now here in Camp Verde with Norman for inspiration, I was delving deeper into the hobby and gaining a lot of practical and useful knowledge. I was trying to narrow down the myriad of radio choices - a truly daunting task! Norman offered to let me borrow his Elecraft K2 to get started. The Elecraft is a high-end unit with a solid performance (so far, everyone I have met on the road has had really nice radio equipment!) and I had serious reservations about using it, so I declined his offer.
The week before leaving Casa Grande I went to a Hamfest with Steve and decided everything I saw was just too big to carry in the motorhome. This past weekend Steve went to another Hamfest and found a great deal on a small radio he thought I might like. He called me about it and told me it was an Elecraft K2 and it was mine if I wanted it. Yet another strange coincidence that has me wondering if the universe could make it any more obvious that I really need to be in amateur radio.
Norman and I opened the radio up and found out it was wired for an Icom microphone. Norman had a friend, Al, who loaned me his Icom HM IC-12. After a bit of confusion, we verified the radio was transmitting and the microphone worked well. Norman loaned me everything else I needed. We set up an antenna on the coach and got the radio ready for my first contact.
It was fitting, of course, that my first contact was Norman, K7VF, from a half mile up the road. We were operating on the 20-meter band at 14.320 MHz. I was powering the radio with a small transformer which limited my output to about 3 watts, but Norman said my signal was a "5 by 9+20" (easily understood and strong signal).
He had me change frequency, to 14.260 MHz, where my second contact was with Bruce, E51MAS, visiting Rarotonga, Cook Islands in the South Pacific. He said my signal was pretty much in the noise, but I was clearly readable. How amazing is that - 4,971 miles on 3 watts! Of course, without Norman (and his 1,200 watts) priming him to listen for me while everyone else kept the frequency clear I probably would have never gotten through, so I don't expect to see that kind of performance very often. All in all, a really great introduction to the world of high frequency (HF) amateur radio.
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