Two days to go........

It was a well spent afternoon today, two hours and 110 repeater frequencies inputted later, the 2m rig in the van is now programmed and ready to go.  It's interesting that I'm following exactly the same route as I did four years ago, and it was 137 repeaters then.....somewhere along the way we seem to have lost 27 repeaters.

Bunk installed

The van is serviced and ready to roll.  I have the same bunk in there that I had in the back of my old pickup truck.  It fits perfectly, in fact I have a lot more room in the van than I had in the truck.

I think part of the reason I have so much room in the van is that I'm taking about a quarter of what I took last time.  The camping equipment has been cut to the bone, and the radio gear has been cut back and put in three small ammo cans.

Antenna wise I'm taking my Buddipole system, my 31' multi-band vertical, and my SOTA Bandspringer, as well as a 2m roll up J-pole.  I figure they will cover any thing I want to do.

Last Sunday was spent checking out the radio gear and antennas.  Everything looks good, so hopefully a lot of contacts will be made this year,......well, we will if the propagation improves!!

Tomorrow we will get the rest of the gear loaded into the van, and make sure there's enough room to live back there with the gear loaded.

Jim VE3ULC & Rick VE3ORY working on my radio gear
and antennas to make sure everything works.