Another Girls Getaway – The ARRL SSB Sweepstakes!

Well it wasn’t the CQWW SSB, but it was another girls getaway nonetheless. Though this time, it was without my beloved sweet pup Nellie, who passed away last spring.

Georgia, who does her very best to constantly remind me she’s not Nellie, and I gathered up our gear and headed off to the Salisbury Beach Reservation Campground. We needed a bit of bonding time. I kinda like how rough around the edges her and I both look in that picture below. Georgie does only have one eye…you are not seeing things! I’ll tell anyone that asks today that she got it poked out while fighting off a bear. The story constantly changes. I call her my pirate puppy.

Georgie is no joke of a dog. A shepherd mix of German and Dutch, she is closing in on a tall 65 pounds at nearly a year old. She was a little thing when we got her from a shelter and they promised us she would be a big girl, not that we were looking for one. She’s not all that much shorter than me when she stand on her hind legs. But while Nellie was a human dog, Georgie is a dog’s dog through-in-through. A much less tame, more independent, and wilder creature. I see a lot of myself in her if you want to know the truth. We don’t trust each other fully yet, maybe never will.

The antenna went up next. Only one, a 40M off-center fed dipole which tends to be my antenna of choice for most contesting. Look carefully and you can see the old faithful’s balun in the tree.

As always on the tail end of the camping season, there are very few people here. There is no problem taking up three campsites worth of trees to hang my antenna up. Regardless, I make sure it is well above any vehicle that may pull in alongside me this evening. You can see the coax running across the hood of my van below. It enters in a crack in the driver’s window. Temperatures would get into the 30s once the sun set.

A quick stroll around the perimeter of the campground, and Georgie and I were treated with the glory of the retreating sun…

If you read this blog, you have seen a version of this shot a million times. Playing radio in the back of my van is pure joy. That is the Yaesu FT-991A running off of a Bioenno battery. I would play a few hours of radio, and when I was ready, I would go home. Really, though, Georgie was ready to go first. I didn’t make that many contacts, but I was pleased with the ones I did get. I never got around to sending in my logs.

By midnight, Georgie and I went home. Earlier, there was an arc of light, some type of rainbow, projecting out of the sky.

Almost every where I go, I am walking in Nellie’s pawprints. Sometimes I wonder if she is sending me a sign.

KM1NDY