[TMRA] Ham Vacation Heaven

[Joe Thielen]

Attached is a pic of the deck of our honeymoon cabin in the Smokies.  Note
the HF vertical and the 2M antennas.  :)

Also attached is a pic of the view from the deck.  The cabin is on a
mountain just to the East of Pigeon Forge and the deck was facing North.  We
had a clear line of site for tens of miles or more.  I could hit Knoxville,
TN with my HT on 5W.  I was hitting repeaters in Corbin, KY with my IC-7000
with 50W with the 2M antenna in the pic.

I thought I would have the world by the balls on HF, but that did not quite
happen.  Firstly I could only tune 10M-20M and secondly they weren't very
open when I was on.

I did have fun on 2M though.  I had an APRS QSO with W8XR using my Kenwood
HT on 5W.  Trying to type texts on the HT sucks!

I also had a neat conversation using my HT to hit an echolink capable
repeater in Knoxville to make a call to K3ML near Key West, FL.  I had a
PSK31 QSO with K3ML the day before from the ham shack at the Ten-Tec
factory.  I looked him up on QRZ and found his story really interesting.
He's 89 and was licensed in 1939.  So I looked him up and had a chat.

Anyway, who says ham ain't fun???