Monday, June 23, 2008

Post Camping Follow-Up

Well, we survived. I meant to post an update last night but I guess after cleaning off the dirt and grime, unpacking, and everything else it slipped my mind. I have to say that even with the minor difficulties we experienced we had a great time and are already looking forward to our next adventure. It might be as soon as the 4th since it's a long weekend.

I got the tent cleaned up a little (at least it's dried out) but I need to go back and get the rest of the dirt off. I thought it was going to rain last night so I packed it up once it was dry. I also need to hit the rain fly and just go through everything to clean it up. The Coleman stove did a great job and I'm very impressed with how my GSI cookset worked. I do wish I'd been able to find a larger set locally but I just had to cut everything up. Even after fixing pancakes, two batches of eggs, and bacon one after the other it cleaned up mighty fine.

I don't know why but the antenna analyzer was back up to 12.2V when we got home so I was able to tune the P1 to 40M with as good as 1.5 SWR. I haven't swept the band yet to get a good idea of the bandwidth but I'm confident now that I'll be able to tune the entire band with a tuner. I'm going to throw the 80M trap on tonight to see if I can check in to the phone net this time. I also cut a radial to the right length instead of dealing with the very small gauge wire that came with it. It was a pain in the rump to lay out and the #14 stranded I have should be better and more durable.

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