I had visions of setting up in a ice fishing shack on one of our 10,000
lakes, temp well below zero, wind holding up my kite antenna, maybe make a
weekend of it. Well I had to settle for a quick 2 hour escape from the
family, but I did make it out onto one of our frozen lakes. I ended up
driving my van out on Eagle Lake, when I got there there was no wind for the
kite, and nice soft snow was coming down. The worst part was the temp had
been rising all day, we started at 10 when I got up, and now it was a balmy
24 (above zero), so much for the big mult. Well it was up to my "ham
sticks", I had one for 20 and another for 40 meters. I threw the rig and
keyer on the dash, plugged them in and found 20 meters hopping, spent a hour
there and then screwed on the 40 meter stick and did a hour there, then it
was back home to see if the house was still standing. The ham sticks did a
great job, not sure if being parked on the ice helped much but ended up with
38 qso's from the lake, did alittle from the home shack and ended up with a
total of 57 qso's, not bad for only 3 hours on the air. Great to hear so
many stations on, great turn out. Sounded like CO was the ice box, KI0G was
at 10 deg.,and N0TU was sounding alittle blue in the fingers at 18 deg.,
look out next year CO, we take pride in out cold wx up here in MN, lets do
it on Jan. 22 next year, when we can really FYBO!
73/72's Jim N0UR
QRP-L #799
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