[Elecraft] 20 m net - belated comment

[Ray Albers]

I tried to post a msg from BVI  on Monday but it doesn't seem to have 
made it.

What a thrill to have been heard on the ECN 20M net! And congrats to Tom 
for pulling my puny signal out of the noise. For the past week, until 
this morning, I was operating as VP2V/K2HYD on Torotla, BVI with my KX-1 
and a 24 ft piece of wire running from the hotel room patio to a nearby 
palm tree (BTW, a local came by and pulled coconuts out of the tree - I 
begged him not to pull down my antenna in the process. Not only did he 
not pull down the antenna, but he cut up one of the coconuts and gave it 
to me to drink the milk - delicious, even tho I was not able to follow 
his admonition to add rum to it before drinking.)

I copied Kevin at about 70%, K1EV at about the same, and Tom, N0SS was 
booming in. Sorry to say other stations were detectable but not 
copyable. My trusty 12V gel-cell battery failed on Saturday and would 
not take a charge, so I was on the internal alkaline AA cells ($3.85 for 
pack of two at the local store!) and running about 1.2 W.  Got good 
results for the week, tho - operated mostly on 20 in the afternoons 
(mornings were spent scuba diving) and had about two dozen contacts - 
including Spain, France and Germany as well as some rag chews into FL.

Hope to do better next sunday with my windom from home!

73

Ray K2HYD