Monday, July 20, 2015

Four Strikes For Murphy

Strike 1:  The battery charger does not work.  Fortunately I had a full charge on the batteries allowing me to have QSOs at Langlade.

Strike 2:  The connector for the solar panel went MIA.  Looked in the bag - nope not there.  Where could it be.  I found it lying in the grass next to the picnic table after cleaning and taking everything down.  Too late - the boat will be arriving in a half hour.  It won't be enough time to charge the batteries anyway.

Strike 3:  Missing RCA cord for my keyer.  I left it at Prince Edward Island.  Actually Bill mistakenly thought it belonged to Ken.  I should have checked but did not.  450 QSOs were done the old fashioned way - by hand using a paddle.  I did find an RCA cord with 3.5 mm stereo plug on one end at the only electronics shop in the island.

Strike 4:  Something blew in my power supply while transmitting RTTY to Jan JJ2RCJ.  I heard a loud pop.  The radio appears to be working OK.  The powergate kicked in with the residual power from the batteries. On the bright side - he got the QSO.  On the dark side - I am dead in the water unless Jean Pierre FP5CJ can loan me a suitable power supply.  I have enough power to run QRP fr about 6 hours but that won't be much fun.  The propagation right now is terrible on 20m.

Hopefully Murphy is finished with me.

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