Well, now we're watching and waiting for Ike as he continues to move toward Galveston and Houston. If you haven't secured anything of importance along the upper Texas Gulf Coast by now you had better hurry, for the storm arrives overnight tonight. Even here in Bell County, people are at the ready just in case. We were forecast to get hit hard here, but things changed at the last minute and we will now be spared the worst; that will now happen in East Texas, but due to the mammoth size of the hurricane we will definitely get some serious wind and rain. We shall see what happens within the next 24 hours.
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In the meantime, it looks like I'm not going anywhere and I will be at home at my apartment this weekend. Beginning with later this afternoon, I will finally begin work to get my ham station set up the way I want it, and that will even include getting my portable HF antenna configured and facing north when I use it and my VHF/UHF antenna moved to the north end of the apartment, along with possibly constructing a wire antenna that I will most likely drape out the window facing south and thrown on the roof that is just below the window and goes out about 30 feet. This wire antenna will be set up in a sloper configuration I believe. I will definitely have my low-pass filter in line, probably between my Yaesu FT-857D and my MFJ-949E antenna tuner which has two SO239 antenna connections. I may eventually set up a twin-lead antenna as well, but I have only begun looking at that idea.
I know I've said this a million times, but it now looks like I will finally be able to get things going concerning Amateur Radio from the apartment. In the future, once I get a replacement DC cord for my Yaesu FT-8800R I plan to begin experimenting with crossband-repeat functions. (I finally got the radio out of the truck my eventual ex-wife has now and will soon give back to the dealership; I had to give up the antenna mount and the DC cord I had in there, just didn't have the time to get those out for it would have taken a lot of trouble to do the job right.)
I want to see how well such an idea of crossband repeating will work around my apartment complex and a little further out, and I may finally get to find out how well this will work. Carrying my Icom T90A HT with me, I can talk back into my FT8800R via simplex and then out to whatever repeater I have set up using crossband repeat functions. It's going to be fun, and I can't wait to see how it all works out. Don't be surprised to hear me on the air and say that I am operating using this type of operating; I do plan to try this often!
Stay tuned, and stay safe this weekend!
WR1TX
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