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The Flight of the Bumblebees is an event sponsered by the Adventure Radio Society that encourages outdoor operating. The Bees are registered stations that hike, bike, boat, etc to their sites. This was a four hour event on Sunday July 30 (1700 to 2100 UTC). I bumbled up to the Patapsco state park to the west of Baltimore, Maryland. I used my Elecraft K2 with a folded dipole (made of 3 lengths of 40ft inexpensive RS twinlead). |
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The bands were as follows: 10m was dead/empty; 15m was disappointing; 20m was
crowded with many QRPers, but not open to the west coast; 40m was in good shape
but with few stations.
The weather was supposed to remain cloudy with a 40% chance of rain. I heard static bursts on all bands (worst on 40m) but that was just a nuisance. The real fun began when the rain started and the thunder was louder than the static bursts in the headphones. A plastic bag protected the rig during the initial rain, but I gave up when the thunder seemed to get close. I got to operate about 2 hours. |
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