Live Show - POTA Happy Hour

So again our apologies . We always like to make sure our content is top quality and available for our listeners , but here is our live stream from last night . Hope you enjoy and thanks again for listening 7-3 . We are live , guys and hopefully those that are , you know , tuned into the stream welcome . You are on a live episode of Live Free and Ham .

This is our happy hour , our first one we're running , so we're glad to have you in attendance and thank you guys for those that are watching there and feel free , along the way , to join in on the chat there .

We're gonna keep this really casual today and we got a couple of great guests here tonight and so , to kind of start things off , obviously my co-host one of my co-host , ryan obviously is not here .

He's off flying the friendly skies again , so we will miss him , but hopefully he's tuned in there and so you know we'll definitely like to hopefully see there him in the chat . But I am also flanked here by my co-host , todd W1STJ . Go ahead , say hi Todd , hi guys , cool . And then followed after Todd is of our episode 6 fame , tim KC1QDK .

He has been with us on episode 6 as I mentioned , talked about technicians and whatnot , so say hello Tim , hello everybody Cool . And we got two great other guests . We've got Paul KF4TPY .

Hey guys , thanks for inviting me a lot here . No problem , sounds good , rob , alright . Well , hey , we'll let Rob dive off to that , but you know . So , those that are on the chat , we see Casey there . Thank you for joining Casey as well . Good to see you , and we are working on that . Echo , we apologize .

Streamyard is just going to be a fussy mess tonight , so we apologize for the echo there . But we'll definitely , you know , try to do our best to combat that . And still , you know , keep this thing rolling on the tracks there . And we got a couple other people there . We get Jason good to see you there .

Jason , whiskey 5 , india , papa Alpha , and there's a few others here as we start to keep chiming in here . So feel free to , you know , say hello in the chat . We'll make sure we circle back around later and , you know , make sure we get you guys there on the list . But tonight is our kind of a happy hour session , so we're going really casual tonight .

We really just want to , you know , make this process , you know , fun and you know it's our first attempt at , you know , doing a live stream with a bunch of different guys and , as you can tell , technical difficulties are , you know , motivating us tonight . So so , again , it is what it is , but hopefully everyone enjoys it and , you know , can be part of it .

So you know , kind of in our usual style , we , we like to , you know , kind of kick things off with all of our typical shows . You know what's been going on . Your ham shack is usually our , you know , tagline of choice , if you , you know , if you got something going on .

Definitely , you know , we'll kind of go through the start of the list here and and I'll start with Todd , but you know , let's we , as in our usual fashion , like I said , we , you know what's been going on your ham shack , todd well .

I mean , you got Vermont in the , in the , the books there , and how many contacts again you ?

I thinkI was on air for about two hours and made 52 contacts . I went into the middle of Europe and all the way out to . California , so I was really happy with that . Then , you know , I had some issues at the at the home shack , my , my primary antenna , the Cobra Ultra Light senior , went deaf . I did sort it out .

What had happened was the the feed line where it connected to the ballon had had shorted and so it was just totally fried on the inside . So I swapped the feed line out .

It's the POTA dogs one . It's just the latest one released , but we had a blast . We were both having crappy days and we decided just to get out there and , you know , play POTA and we were all the better for it , for sure it's my new favorite park . I know totally so cool , all right , well , hey , good on that one . So let's pass the baton anyway .

Yeah , pass it over to you , tim , go ahead . So what's been going on your ham shack today ?

So in my shack I just finished building the true USDX I have to install I've been stalled the the mic or the speaker a little better .

I think I installed it incorrectly , but it's one of those direction things where I probably reversed it , or something but pretty easy to fix and work on that right cool and I've been doing some , some Morse code and I signed up for CW Ops Academy .

You're the ones gone out and done a heck of a lot of POTA and you know , past couple of months , more than I think Todd and I combined because we've been so swamped . But , yeah , good to have you on and you know , thanks for coming . So , to you know , invites I extended an invite to Rob , who's of YouTube . You know channel fame 741 .

So , rob , what's been going on in your Hampshire , hey guys ? So , first off , thanks for inviting me along .

Second of all , I wanna apologize for the phone call a minute ago I worked with my son's Boy Scout group and we're running in town tomorrow , so people are texting me and calling me Questions about it . I apologize for that .

I used to work with one of them and they were putting together something that they were calling sort of activate Connecticut Day , where I guess it was support your parks weekend .

So they try and do this in conjunction with that and the idea was to have as many Connecticut hams who do poda out at poda parks to get as many on the air simultaneously as we could .

And then at 11 o'clock we were gonna have a net , so to speak , where all of the parks were gonna contact each other so that we could all get park to park , you know within Connecticut as many as parties .

So some of the guys were set up at parks that had pavilions . It was a little easier for them . Where I chose to set up , we didn't have a pavilion , I just had WC , so we all kind of took shelter in that . There were a handful of us that kind of came and went . We made some contacts . In the morning I had one guy stop by that was not a ham .

I had sort of advertised it on the local repeater and on one of the club Facebook groups and he caught wind of it . So he showed up . He's interested in soda and poda , Doesn't have his license yet , but wanted to ask some questions and see kind of how it all went .

So I spent a good hour with him just talking about him radio and getting his enthusiasm up and that kind of thing . So I think we'll have another guy that'll come soon , so it'll be good .

So then started started we had more and more gaps where there was dead air , and then I ended up having a embryo , a reintroduction , a one KC away from us and it kind of went everything out . So we just kind of called it quits at that point . So it was a success but it was also a little bit you know , touch , touch or anything that you wanted to see .

We learned some stuff . I think we'll be a little bit next time and hopefully the weather will be a little better . But , yeah , that was the big thing for us .

I had some family event that I had to actually go down in Cromwell and so you know I was like I was hoping I packed the Pote of Gear stuff and I'm thinking maybe there's a possibility that I could get out , and it just poured buckets the whole entire time and I was like you know , out of all the times it would have been great to be able to hit like

this , three or four parks at least . I know . You know , going home that I could probably hit and you know the family would just been dragged with me to , you know , to go . But you know my daughter's a ham , so I can kind of get away with it a little bit . But yeah , it's kind of a bummer , just poured buckets .

That's exactly kind of what I'd love to be able to , you know , represent that's an awesome idea to be able to just do that and , you know , in the state you're in , to be able to just kind of get more people active and out on more parks , especially on a sport , your parks weekend , I mean , that's even better .

But yeah , just that rain , I think , killed everything , and it was jamboree on the air too as well .

It was only like one or two hams in the troop at the time and they really just , you know they were , they did their thing with the radios and they were always the cool guys in the camp we went to like do some backpacking trips because they were the ones for the communications . I think so like , oh , I want to do that .

You know I can't pack my CB radio . So you know , let's see what this ham stuff's about . So cool guys , all right . Well , you know that . You know it's great to have all you guys here on here . We're going to try this . You know a little bit on and off .

So you know you play your mute buttons on and off , see if we can , you know , minimize some of the echo if you hear it . But ultimately hopefully it'll keep the conversation flowing . So tonight we're just talking about POTA . I mean , we all do it at different levels and all have stuff going on . So I kind of just wanted to frame the conversation .

You know what , you know what POTA activity you kind of like love to do , like what's the biggest thing you're ? You know , when you do get a chance to get out there and do POTA , are you more of an activator , you're more of a hunter ? Do you have , like you know you , a big QRO guy , qrp guy ? You know 100 Watts or die ?

You know kind of talk a little bit about that . You know what's your setup a little bit , a little bit . You know what kind of bounce ideas around it , because I think some of us have similar kind of configurations .

But you know it's always good to hear , you know , other people's take on that , because I know you know a few on the stream here definitely have done the QRP thing and the legit QRP thing and you know and have done really well with it . So anyway , who wants to kind of take it first ? And you know talk a little bit about the setup ?

You know , todd , you know you're a seasoned POTA guy , go ahead .

So I there was one last night when I was working and I was all excited I get on my flex and I'm remote and I'm friend and I can't hear anything . Yep , not gonna hear that one . But yeah , that's what I like to do the most is just get out and do it , and I don't do it often enough .

I was on a rampage where I was doing them all the time and then I just got too busy . I'm coaching baseball and the stuff with home and kids and work , so I kind of slowed down . That's why Friday was a nice change , because it was good to get out , get the gear out again and remember how to do it .

And I think my favorite part is when I get a pile up . I love working the pile ups . It's a lot of fun , and I don't even I get into this zone and then when the pile up finally ends and I look at how many contacts I made , I'm like , wow , I can't believe I made that many .

So that's kind of my thing and I like going out and checking out new places . There's a lot of cool places out there I'd probably never go to if it wasn't for parks on the air . I probably wouldn't be driving around and taking a 10 minute detour to check out a new park just because you know why would I go there ?

But now I have a reason and I like to check it out and I've been traveling a little bit for work . So I've been down to Mississippi , florida Looks like I might be going down to Virginia soon and Arkansas . So I like to get the new state . So I'm gonna set a bucket list that I'll work every state before I die .

And I said you get CW in your car ? And he said , yeah , I do it while I'm driving . I'm like , well , I hope you pull over . And he's like , oh yeah , I pull over and I'll get out in the parking lot and we'll try to do it . And it was the shortest , 20-meter contact ever and he sent me a QRL card and all that and I hung it up on the wall .

I liked that one . But that's what I've been doing digital and CW and I'm moving towards doing all CW and we'll see if I can pull it off in the future .

You know , sadly , I am not and you know , therefore , I should be punished . So .

You know setup is or what you're working on right now If you've done any recent POTA .

I began the iteration with an iCom 706 mark 2G Fantastic all in one radio , but it's a little weighty , you know , to be carrying around for POTA . So I did the upgrade to the YSU 891 , which is like the same radio that everybody that does POTA uses , but it's a fantastic radio . Now I'm in the phase where I guess I'm trying to minimize my antenna weight .

You know I the Wolf River coil is a fantastic antenna but you know it's not always the easiest to lug around . And then , you know , I got the chameleon MPASS 2.0 , which is it's even bulkier to carry around , you know . So I think , I think that the hope is that the X-Tenna is going to be the new POTA antenna .

You know , resident on , you know , 40 , 20 , 15 , and 10 . You know , so that that'll be good . But you know , I mean I think I've got five activations currently , one in Florida and the rest were up here .

The Florida activation was my first solo on my own activation , which is kind of neat , because I was down there on vacation , I think in a matter of like two , two and a half hours I had over 100 contacts , so it was absolutely fantastic , you know , and that's that's .

That's where I guess you get that hook right , you know when you're going out , you're in the park . If you , if you have a super successful activation , you just want to do it more , you know , and it doesn't . You don't have to have the fanciest radio , you don't have to have the fanciest gear .

You know , I've seen everything from really inexpensive setups to really expensive setups and you know , I think , if you've got any interest at all , just explore that interest , go out with somebody and you'll , you'll figure it out , whether you like it or not .

And you guys are going to laugh the there's a state forest directly across the street , probably about 200 feet from it , and that's a pod of entity and I like just never go over there and activate until recently .

But now the new job I have I'm working from home three days a week and I get a lunch break now , which is kind of nice . So what I figured out I could do is on my lunch breaks , when you know nobody's here my wife's at work , my son's at school I can go across the street and activate for half an hour , 45 minutes and I'm working on getting a kilo .

I think I'm up to 550 or something . I'd have to look at the page . I guess I'm trying to get the key well over there . Just to say that I did so . That's kind of my current thing . But as far as what I like to do with poda , I also like to ride motorcycles . I have a couple of small motorcycles .

So what I do in the summertime is I try to activate poda while I'm riding the motorcycle . So I'll hop on the bike and , you know , put what I can carry on there and find a park somewhere , you know , an hour away or something , go there and activate a little bit and then ride around , kind of a thing .

So that's , that's what I've been up to , and now that I'm sort of back into it , of course it's . It's not really riding Well . Riding season's almost over , so I've got some ideas for the spring when I get back out there . I got a few options for it .

I've got it down where I know exactly where my antenna needs to be . I don't even have to check it anymore and I go in there and I'll whip out like 20 to 50 contacts , pack it up and be back , you know , within an hour . So , but yeah , that's , that's pretty awesome that you're able to do that . And you're talking about antennas .

That's one of the things I wanted to talk about tonight . I watched on Cam Radio 2.0 . Jason did a couple days ago he did a review on a thing called a res antenna , the Ranger 80 . And it's a coiled wrap like bottom , bottom end coil antenna , and have you guys heard of it ? Have you guys heard ? All right , so it comes with a backpack .

Everything's in the backpack you need it either has a spike where you can have a tripod for it . Has a military antenna which is kind of like on the rope , you know , like that rope with . You know they bend down like a 10th , 10th staker . Or you can get a whip antenna . You get to pick one of them .

I'd say , get the military one and then buy the whip one for 20 bucks , because the military one's like 84 bucks . But it looked pretty awesome and you can add . It comes with four radios . You can add another four and he loved it . He was in Texas and it was wicked dry , so he was having a hard time . You know .

You know getting it , you know really tuned . But he was making a ton of contacts on it and what was cool about it is it's got like its own , like it's something that you just it's a back , it's all in a backpack and it's pretty . He set it up fairly quickly and it does 80 meters . So I think it does .

I think he said 15 , 15 to 80 , but you can do 10 if you get the , if you get the whip antenna , you can shorten it and you might be able to tune it to 10 . But I thought it was cool because it's a vertical that you can get to 80 meters on and not a lot of people do hold on 80 meters .

And I think if you got out there and you're able to activate on 80 meters , you might get a lot of people because it's not a popular band that people you know decide to do hold on .

So everything fits in the small backpack and I just throw that in the car and when I want to go I get some time to activate , I just stop whip it out , it's all there , you know , and I brought that with me to Mississippi and Florida when I was traveling . So that's , that's like a really good antenna and I like it .

But this one , really interesting because it's a little different , but it gets the 80 meters , which is pretty cool . And then the , the buddy pole . Yeah , if you are you , any of you guys , you're familiar with the buddy pole , Are you Rob ? So , the coil .

The coil is like you know , you got these little pins and you got to screw them in and you got to adjust them for each band . Well , with this resin it's kind of got like a notch and you just kind of move it up and down and it clicks in automatically . So there's nothing to take apart or not to screw .

You just kind of move your position up and down the coil . You know , the farther down you go , the more , or the farther up you go , the more coil you use in or whatever . So it looked pretty cool and it's . It's something you know it's . It's quite expensive .

I mean , I think it's just the basic thing is like 550 , right , but if you get the tripod and you get the other antenna and you get the extra coils , you know you're looking like $700 , but it does look like a cool antenna and it does . I think it would work awesome , like on the beach .

So you know what , like this is a kind of a debate for me , because I'm a big Wolf of a coil guy , I love my Wolf of a coil and I know a few guys have it and you know some of them , you know have moved on from it and you know , are doing other directions and totally fine , I mean I'm not , you know , gonna hold anybody over the the the beat of

the fire of you know you're not a Wolf of a guy or whatever , but I love that antenna . I mean , it's been my go-to since day one and but it sounds a little bit like , though , when you just described a little bit in terms of configuration and , you know , in design , right , is it the same kind of setup or no ?

If you want to do 10 meters , count this many coils down . This one really doesn't have that . You're kind of moving it up and down and trying to figure it out . He did say , like you know , once you use it a couple times You'll know exact . You'll know in the general area where 20 meters is , where 10 is , whatever . So yeah , I mean that that's .

It was just it's pretty cool antenna and , like I said , it comes in a bit , comes with a backpack , so it's all packed into one thing and it's . He set it up pretty quickly .

I mean he said the biggest problem was it's so dry there in Texas day in that rain that he thought that maybe the Tuning was a little bit harder just because the radio is where there's no , there's no moisture in the ground .

You put the ruler on it and you use the slide coil and you could tune the thing very quickly Wherever you wanted to go , and I believe that one did 80 meters also and I Came .

Just hook the radio the right radio up and throw it out and it tuned up very quickly . And I really liked that super antenna .

And the other one was the Alex loop and there was an article in last month's QST magazine about it and he brought it and he showed us orienting it vertically and orient orienting it horizontally , and who's able to get a bunch of Bands tuned in on that .

But I was really impressed with that super antenna and that one's on my wish list , you know , I really thought it was a good one for Poda and it folds up just like the buddy pole into a little Little tiny bag , you know . Oh , is that the ranger that we were talking about there ?

I mean he the on his , on the him radio 2.0 . It said Poda , with the res antenna range of 80 for each FM radio . I guess it was on last week . It's um , it was pretty interesting and it was . I'd never heard of it and this company I guess that's basically all they do is have that one antenna , but it was look pretty cool .

Do we find that when you're out in Pota and actually I think Miguel had a good question there in the chat With you know what's , what's people's Pota preference ? You know , obviously , when you're out there , I mean , you know , rob , you got the luxury where you don't have to go further than Troy , 20 yards to your you know Pota destination .

But when you do hang up , leaving your driveway , you know , you know what do you primarily Operate ? You know a special , you know consistent . You know , are you habitual in your terms , your operation , or it's just when you get to your location ? So you know .

I look like a fool riding the thing , but I can carry those to the park and I have some radials that I clip on to the mounts and it works great . I sometimes have to use a tuner because the Hamsticks go on a tune a little bit on me , but but that works just fine .

And what I've found with that is , when I'm on the motorcycle I end up at these obscure like wildlife management areas and stuff for some reason , so there's no picnic tables . So I actually have a foldable camping chair that I got on Amazon that you know packs up .

I can put that in the tail bag on the bike along with my you know radio and stuff and that works great . I have no problems with , you know , using the one of the hamsticks , the radials , and sit on the chair , put the radio on the seat of the motorcycle and Just kind of you know , chill out there .

If I'm going to a regular car Then you know I'll take , take my car . I've got an old suburban that I drive around Most of the time , so I'll just pop the hatch and again , I got my foldable chair .

I'll sit on the ground and use the base of the car as my Surface , unless there's a picnic table or a pavilion or something like that , in which case you know I'll prefer that , and if I can throw up my end , then halfway I'll do that . If not , I've got a hamster out on the car too and I can use those .

So but I've had lots of success with just an infant half wave or the Hamsticks . When I first started doing poda , I had a linked dipole and that was capable of 80 meters as well . You know I could stretch that out if I was at a big enough place and that worked good , but it was a pain in the butt to set it up .

So I've just gone down to the end , fed halfway , or the hamsticks for right now . I was experimenting with a delta loop that I was gonna try and bring out , but that got real cumbersome to kind of pack up and I left it across the street .

But we went to a park after near-fest in the spring and we spent like what two hours trying to set it up to find out that they gave us the wrong length . So we never got it to work . So we whipped out the buddy poll . We're gonna activate this park is . You know we've been here for two hours and we ended up using that .

But I think like , if we were gonna do like an all-day activation at one park , I mean I think like his hex beam would be the one to go with , just because it's . You know , you're not as compromised but I've always used a vertical . I think I've used a wire maybe once or twice , but the buddy the buddy pole throw is is my go-to antenna for .

But , like I said , I'm up for looking for other ones too , because I mean it's always nice to mix things up .

You know that's ideal and it's very nice . I I keep a little Cabela's folding aluminum table in my truck and and a little foldable chair . I mean , obviously I'm not gonna , I'm not gonna hike for miles with a 50-pound pack and you know my , my table and my chair , you know .

But if I can park somewhere and I can , I could walk , you know , you know , within 500 yards , you know , of my truck , I'm quite content to just lug that stuff .

But the hope is that down the road I Can , I can have like a smaller bag or I can just take , you know , a couple of my organizational bags and I could throw them in the smaller bag and I could have , you know , my radio , a battery and and the X-Tenna when you know , like I could , I could hike up a mountain with it , you know , and activate anywhere

along that line . So I just I thought it was a great question that Miguel put out and and you should you should kind of want to try and tailor your setup To where you're going more , the most frequently and and it never hurts to have a backup setup , you know .

The first park we tried to do was Chloe Dam , and Kim and I went out there and set up and my radio failed , so but it didn't deter me from from still trying .

And and another one we did was Marshall State Forest , and I did that in a new Ipswich with a vertical , and we had to drive really far out into the woods and Kim and I took our RAV4 and we drove up a logging road a few miles into the woods and and it , there was nobody out there .

I mean it was , we were out in the middle of the woods and we we set up on the on the logging road and at one point , believe it or not , an Amazon truck came flying down the road and I was like Amazon is out here on the logging road in the middle of the forest .

But Kim and I were both wondering you know where the the ghost Amazon truck went , because it just went off into the woods and never came back and we were Pretty far out in the middle and it was only like four people who had activated that that park and I see why you got a really dry , far out the woods in the middle of nowhere .

The only people that you get out there Amazon and Really determined hams , I guess .

You know , eric brought it to the club and I did a talk about quota and I demoed it the Wolf River coil and so if you want to get on a , you know that might be a good choice . Also , I I haven't seen a lot of people doing like Todd said . I haven't seen a lot of people doing . Haven't seen a lot of people doing at least digitally doing 80 .

If you start activating parks on 80 meters you might get the hate Listen my hemorrhoids are flaring .

Has any of you guys seen anyone do it ?

If 10's activated , 15 , 12 , whatever you know , and if you're not getting anything and you need to , you know you run out of time and you need to activate the park . You know , switch it over to 20 and you'll be sure to get it for the most part . But , like I said , when I did Vermont on Friday , I did it all on 10 .

And I was gonna switch to 20 because I saw a ton of people on 20 . The band looked strong and I ran out of time . I'm like , oh , I gotta get out of here . So you know , I like doing the band and I've gotten a lot of people like thanking me , like , hey , thanks for activating 10 because it's , you know , not too many people do it .

But you know lately 10's been happening , so there's been a lot of people . There's been more and more parks being activated on 10 .

Hey , that's awesome .

But for me it's always , you know , if I forget my Wilpa Recoil , because I've been doing that lately , I don't know why , maybe it's because it's underneath my desk and it's , you know , in a bag that I just don't grab when I grab all my stuff but I use . I've got an ATAS 120 on the truck and so that's always been like my lifesaver .

So that intended does phenomenally well for being a compromise antenna . And I have to say , even like when the conditions have been just really bad across the board , because we've got a solar flare or something that one is kind of almost in every time , or almost maybe once , I think it's it hasn't saved my bacon and I came up short activating .

But that was like you know , those those treacherous moments where you just sit there and you're like I need one more contact . How many more thousand times do I have to sit there and go . I see cute photo . See cute photo , please .

At that point , after the third guy realizing that it's a guy on the other end , it shuts the system down pretty quickly .

I brought it to my club for field day one year and I was I don't remember what antenna . I had something and , oh , a G5 RV . I had that set up and I'm using this 10 watt radio and nobody's coming back to me . And this , this lady came over . She , she was sort of new to the club at the time and I said do you want to operate ?

I says I'm not making any contacts here , but you know , feel free . I said the radio is only 10 watts , so maybe we're not going to make too many contacts . And she said , oh , that's good , I'm , you know , I'm kind of new , so I want to go slow . Ok , so she gets on instant pile up 10 watts . So it's like , ok , and I see what's going on here .

But but she had a lot of fun . I'm glad that she got on on the radio and got that experience .

For me I'll give a little you know primer . Here I'm shaping up a beach , you know kind of a QRP setup that I can take that's pretty horrible with me for summer vacations and and whatnot .

But any of you guys working on other like kind of travel , podo type stuff , or you're refining your kit , what anything you know kind of been working on recently with related to that .

But I want to activate it .

It's pretty big , it's kind of like an octagon and it came inverted , meaning they put the cloth on or the material on inside out . So I was like you got to be kidding . Of course , you know I didn't check it out .

I get it on Amazon , I leave in the box , I bring it to field day like what could go wrong and thank God Paul was there , you know the marine , and he figured it out . We actually inverted and flipped the whole thing around and finally got it . You know , up and running , but they also make the , you know cold weather , what do they call it ?

Like the fishing hot . Right , it's portable Bob house , yeah , portable Bob house . So but yeah , so that's my , that's our now that's my station set up , that I , it's big enough that you can .

You can have a bunch of people in there and it's got some Velcro side panels so if it's raining which was , I could protect the equipment from the rain getting in , and if it's not raining , you can take them off and got the airflow . So , but yeah , I couldn't believe it , they , I and it looked .

When I got the box it looked like it had been opened or whatever . So I thought maybe it was just a return . But I'm sure someone bought it , was like this thing's inside out and returned it and I was going to do the same thing . But I was like he's like I can fix it , you know , and messed around with it , got it up and running .

Hopefully this year we're supposed to have a really cold winter and so the last few winners , we haven't had a whole lot of ice . I haven't been able to do a whole lot of ice fishing . So hopefully , you know , I'll be able to put the wolf river coil out outside the ice fishing hut and have my , have my trap set up .

And next week , so my , my birthday is tomorrow , wedding anniversary is Thursday , so Wednesday we're going up to forks main and it's my ideal vacation is a cabin in the middle of nowhere , and so I'm going to bring the radio up and you know , hopefully , I don't know that there's a state park right around Moosehead Lake or not , but you know , if , if anything

else , you know I'll just I'll get on the air and play some HF . But yeah , you know , like , always , always be evolving your kit and always be , you know , looking at ways to improve and just have fun . You know , that's , that's , that's the goal , have fun , you know , talk to people on the air and and just get out there .

I mean , it makes it kind of interesting , doesn't ? When I first became a ham , I figured I'm going to buy one HT and be done with it . Oh , then I'm going to buy a mobile rig and then I'm going to buy an HF rig and I'm going to be done . I'm never going to buy and I'm going to buy one antenna . You know they laugh at me because now I'm buying .

Intent is I'm . You know it's just getting crazy .

And then I just want to finish my kilo across the streets before the snow flies , because once it does I won't be able to get over there as easily or you can just drive the car over the curb and run a longer coax well , yeah , the problem over there is the snow plow plow up the bank . I won't be able to get get over there without snow shoes .

I think we , when the Rove was the big thing , we almost , you know , had it all planned and they pulled the carpet out onto the the Rove , you know , award so we never really got back to it . But yeah , that's not like a plan .

The short seven meter pole , the packs down pretty small and I got a couple other batteries and a few other odds and ends to round out the kit there . And so that's primarily gonna be like my beach radio .

And the reason why I call it my beach radio is not because I like to just use it the beach , just because my wife's a big beach goer and I can't stand standing . You know being at the beach for five , six hours straight . You know watching the world pass you by and I'm like , okay , I gotta have a radio .

So this thing will do digital , this will do sideband . It packs down , it's 20 watts , it's gonna . You know , if you haven't ever seen , you know if you haven't Google BG2FX FX4CR great little radio . There's a lot of reviews out there , but I'll probably throw one up on my channel when I get it just to , you know , kind of go through the features in it .

But it's gonna be my grab , that small little pack , because if I tried to pack my 891 and my bag and everything , my wife would be like you're not coming to the beach and you're ruining it for me .

It's basically what it would turn out to be , so that that's my goal and where I'm going with it and that'll hopefully we'll get flushed out over the winter time and you know we'll be ready for spring , summer and so you know I'll be doing a . Well , it won't be truly QRP but it'll be close , you know . So I'll at least feel like I'm a QRP here .

So you know that's kind of my my plans going forward and you know we'll just keep doing POTA . So you know let's , you know , kind of wrap this stuff up here . We're a little bit over the hour here , but you know all of those that were online and in the chat . Definitely thank you for hanging out and we'll just kind of go a quick roll call here .

You know we recognize Casey if you're still hanging out there , having fallen asleep . Man , glad to have you on there . And we've got again . Wp5 , jason , sorry , w5 IPA , jason , and I think I saw Miguel in there as well . Good to have Miguel on there and he was one with a great question . So thanks again for posting that question there , miguel .

And so , outside of that , you know we just want to go through here . You know , if you want to let us know where people can find you and how they can get in contact with you , you'll start with , you know , go ahead with Tim , and you know how can people get a hold of you .

Oh man , maybe it was something to kind of dive into in the bike aspect , more of the pedal style . But yeah , very cool on there , so cool . Well , thank you guys for being on there . Todd , obviously , how can they find you ?

Again , if you haven't already subscribed to the show , definitely subscribe to our YouTube channel , liv Freeingham , or you can head over to our website and leave us a review . We'd love to get reviews , so definitely forward them on . We'll read your review if you post one in our next show .

As we've said before , you can contact all of us on our social media , the latest information , shows and content , and we always have our Patreon links and biosphere links in our show notes and our website . So if you want to help out the show that way , definitely put those links in the show's love .

As Todd said , you can find everything you need to about our hosts . And again , ryan is not here tonight , but he is definitely missed , as always , and I'm sure he'll be back to the US coast soon and he'll be back on another stream too as well .

With that , everybody , thanks again for tuning in , and Rob and Paul and Tim , as always , we appreciate you guys for being on the show tonight and thanks for making us a blast . With that , we'll say 7-3s and everybody we'll say see you later .