Had the normal Saturday breakfast with some of my radio buddies this morning. I really look forward to our time together every week to talk radio. I do miss Mr. Bigbie-W4MMQ though. I'll never forget him.
After breakfast today a few of us hung around and helped a new HAM to the area, Glenda-KJ4LWE, do some troubleshooting on her mobile HF radio. She's trying to get it to connect to her laptop so that she can run PSK31. Keven-KW4B, Mark-KA4CID, and myself tinkered with it for a bit and then decided we'd step back, do some research, and then try it again later. We did rule out some things but still couldn't get it to work. However, later in the day, Kevin and I both determined that we were not using the correct port on the radio. Now it all makes sense. Maybe we should have read the manual first.........nah, not as much fun that way. Anyhow, we'll do some testing then get back with Glenda at a later date to get things up and running.
After that Kevin and I headed over to Candler Hospital to unpack and test the new VHF/UHF radio on the newly installed dual band antenna. Candler is one of our "Served Agencies" for Chatham County ARES. We put the analyzer on the feedline to test the SWR and we found that it was a little high (about 3:1) on 2 meters but just fine (1:1) on 70 cm. We went ahead and got good comm checks on all the local repeaters and even a couple up in South Carolina. At least now we know we'll be able to communicate from Candler if needed. Thanks to Mac-KF4LMT and Mark-KA4CID for the help with the checks. We'll need to get Savannah Communications out there to test the line again on 2 meters just to be sure everything is ok. We might also need to see if there is an adjustment that we can make on the antenna to bring it resonant in the 2 meter band. After we get all that sorted out the next big step with be to get the HF radio ordered, installed and tested. Once we're done at Candler, we'll move on and get things up and running at St. Joseph's Hospital. One step at a time.
