I went to the hilltop in EN50rl, managed to get the 6 and 2 meter Yagi antennas set up in the hot sun, hooked everything up and it seemed to be doing fine. Antennas were working and SWR was good. I called several people over about a half an hour on 6 meters with my FT857D. None of them seemed to hear me. I was only running 10 watts as a QRP Portable Hilltopper. Then I saw smoke come out of the rig and then no power came out. It still received OK. I checked both 50 and 144 MHz and had no power output on either band. So I took everything down and went home.
The rig did quite well up till now. I used it in the June VHF contest. I don't feel like digging into it right now to see what went bad. I'm sure I can repair it if I can get the parts.
I only had today from about 1 to 6 pm CDT to participate. I can't be on tomorrow. But I'm sad that I didn't make a QSO.
73, Zack W9SZ
