In my last post, I mentioned putting up the MFJ Big Ear antenna and trying to make contacts on the 20-meter band without success. Thinking about that, I wondered about the set-up. The Big Ear antenna is a multi-band antenna. For different frequency bands, you need to alter the antenna to tune it. To do this, you shorten the length of the antenna whips for higher frequencies or pull the whips all the way out for lower frequencies.

For 20 meters, you pull the whips all the way out. For 30 or 40 meters you need to electrically lengthen the antenna by tuning a coil at the bottom of one of the whips. The instructions say to short the coil with the whips fully extended for 20 meters. I figured that shorting the coil meant putting the alligator clip on the jumper wire on the top of the coil, thus taking the coil out of the electrical path. The problem was, the jumper wire was too short to reach the top of the coil, so I guessed they intended it to go on the last coil at the bottom. The instructions were less than clear.

After giving it more thought, I realized that this couldn’t be right. Maybe I was so far out of resonance, I couldn’t pick up a signal. I e-mailed MFJ’s support and received a two-word reply to my question of where to place the alligator clip. The reply was “bottom third.” This made no sense to me. The coil has about 34 turns, so they were telling me to put it somewhere on the bottom 11 turns. Nonsense. I know some conditions can make the placement change by a coil or two, but not 11. I decided to experiment.

I attached a short section of wire to the top of the coil and insulated it with heat shrink tubing. Then I attached the alligator clip to the wire to “short” or bypass the coil. I hooked everything back up and tried the 20-meter band again. Right away, I could hear someone transmitting. He was transmitting from the USS Midway in San Diego Bay! Apparently a San Diego Ham Club has access to the radio room on the USS Midway on the second Saturday of each month. With their antenna high above the bridge of the aircraft carrier, their signal has a great reach. I was picking it up loud and clear from over 1,300 miles away.

Although I could pick up their signal, my output was too weak to reach them. Later, I made contact with a guy in Alaska. He was loud and clear. He said he could hear me, but my signal was weak and a little noisy. He told me he was transmitting with 1,000 watts of output. Wow – that’s 10 times the 100 watts I have. I thought maybe I needed more power.

Then I heard from a guy in Texas – he also had 100 watts like me, but had a strong, clear signal. He said his antenna was on a 150-foot tall tower! I don’t need more power – I need to get my antenna higher! These contacts were over-the-air station-to-station with no repeaters or landlines involved.

Sunday was our last full day in Mount Vernon. Donna started the day with a long bicycle ride. She rode to La Conner and made a 27-mile loop. Here are a few of the photos she took on her ride.

Later, we drove over to Alana and Kevin’s place. We visited in the backyard – I also watched the Moto GP race and the Formula One race they recorded on their DVR for me. Kevin grilled shrimp for tacos and made a great pineapple salsa to go with it.

A blacktail doe with two fawns came into the backyard and fed on leaves at the edge of the woods – they didn’t pay much attention to us. Around 9pm, we said our goodbyes until next time. It’s always a little sad because we don’t really know when next time will be.

On Monday morning, we hit the road. I drove south on I-5 to WA530 – the Arlington exit. There’s a Pilot-Flying J travel center there and I wanted to fill up before we headed east. There won’t be many places to fuel up until we reach Idaho and we would be low on fuel by then. I don’t like to run the tank low – you never know what might come up.

From there, our route took us through Darrington, then we hit WA20 – the North Cascades Highway at Rockport. The road closure and detour we encountered on our way west had been cleared the previous Friday, so no detour this time. We climbed up Rainy Pass then Washington Pass before the downhill run to Winthrop. In Mount Vernon, we were at an elevation of 31 feet above sea level. Donna said she thought Washington Pass was over 5,000 feet above sea level. I thought it was closer to 4,000 feet. Later I looked it up. It’s more than 5,400 feet above sea level, so Donna was right. I love it when she’s right.

We checked in at Pine Near RV Park in Winthrop around 2:30 pm. We’re in site seven – the same site we had three weeks ago. Awhile later, I set up my Comet GP6 antenna – this one is for 2-meter (VHF) and 70cm (UHF) frequencies which are line-of-sight frequencies. I tried the repeater here in town and got a report back that I had a good signal. The guy asked where I was, then he told me I could see the repeater from where we were.

Then I tried the repeater in Twisp – about eight miles away as the crow flies. This repeater is linked via a network to other repeaters. A guy in Republic, WA said I had a clear signal. After that, I found that the hams over here aren’t very talkative, especially with an outsider. Today, I plan to take down the Comet and put up the Big Ear to see if I can make contact outside of the area.

Donna put the leftover tri-tip to good use. She made beef stroganoff for Monday night’s dinner with kale fettucini she bought at a farm stand on her last bike ride.

This morning we found pickleball. We played here before, a couple of years ago at the outdoor ice skating rink. When we went there this morning, the rink was closed. We came back home and Donna looked at another resource. We found out they play at the tennis courts on the west side of town. We went there and played for a couple of hours and had a good time.

We’re at an elevation of a little over 1,800 feet above sea level here. The weather has been hot and dry. It was 90 degrees on Monday afternoon and 86 degrees yesterday. Today is cooler with a forecast high of 80 degrees. Tomorrow should be about the same and we’ll pull out of here on Friday.

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