Y'all jinxed me, talking about dupes. In my never-ending quest to catch up with George and John for Challenge points, I keep a chart of each expedition and bands worked. I've worked TN8K on 10, 15, 17, and 20M CW, and in the spirit of "taking them however I can get them", also worked them on 40 and 12 FT8. Last night, I finally got through on 40 and when I came back to the shack a couple of hours later, I checked my chart and my old eyes deceived me and I saw him on 40 FT8 with a booming signal and worked him again!

Oh well, 20 lashes with the Wouff Hong and things will be square.

I usually get them on CW on bands above 80M, but occasionally resort to FT8, and in extreme cases, even SSB! I took a shot at a very tall pine tree with my spud gun and got my projectile hung up. It would have been perfect for an 80M wire vertical. I'll try again.

I'd like to have a dual band inverted-L for 160 and 80, but haven't figured out exactly how best to do that. Tuning the 160 part is the puzzle - It would be very narrow and I'd have to lower the far end to tune it.

There have been posts about the River Valley Hamfest maybe not happening - it's fake news. The hamfest is ON and we are now even more motivated to do well. We may not have a commercial dealer for new equipment, but times have changed. MTC doesn't do much of that anymore, and Associated Radio isn't available. It's a little far from home for Associated Radio, anyway. We've checked with every dealer we can think of, so if you know of anyone we could call, let us know.

Everything else is on track for business as usual for the hamfest.

73,

Dennis