On the Road Again - Perhaps

I’m looking forward to a new road trip to Myrtle Beach this summer, and for the first time, I’ll be able to operate mobile.  After having dragged my feet for a very long time, I have finally installed (really just roughed in) the TS-480SAT into the Explorer.  I have an antenna mount that fits into the trailer hitch of the explorer and I put a MFJ 20 meter whip on that and brought the coax under the lift gate for the time being.  I know I’m doing all the wrong things; I’m taking power from the cigarette lighter and the radio is merely sitting on the floor of the rear passenger compartment and for right now, I not concerned.   If everything survives the shakedown cruise and I’m able to make some good contacts, I’ll look into making a permanent installation. 

I’m really kicking myself for not doing this last winter when it was much cooler, but hindsight is, of course, twenty-twenty.  I’m looking for a way to bring wires straight from the battery into the passenger compartment to power the radio.  If anyone else with a 2003 Explorer XLT has made this installation and wants to give me a hint, I’d appreciate that.  I intend to bring the coax through the spare tire compartment, but, for the time being, it’s just too hot even in the evenings to mess with it.  I have a storage space under one of the rear seats and I’ll find a way to stabilize the radio there.  I’d like to have a longer microphone cord, and I’ll have to look into that, but it’s not a deal breaker.  The control head fits very nicely in the well of the center console.  I had no trouble at all getting the whip tuned for 14.175 mHz.   It tunes nicely with the autotuner from 14.070 through 14.350. 

I made a few calls on PSK, JT65 and SSB.  I worked two stations, KD0NZY and N0OKS on PSK and had several stations come back to me on sideband, but they were barely able to read me.  I had one station answer my CQ on JT65, but we were unable to complete the contact.  Twenty meters has been wide open all day and well into the evenings for the past few days, and as a cynic like me would expect the band is way down today when I need to do some testing!

I don’t expect to be able to work stations like I do with my super-duper OCF Dipole a million feet up in the air, but I think things will improve. 

I have a new QSL card for eQSL.