Setting Up

Arriving at PY5EG is quite impressive. You don't see any antennas on the way. You drive under huge electric transmission lines and wonder how you are ever going to hear anything through the line noise. About a half mile up the drive way you arrive in a clearing with five towers. Each tower supports big big antennas that are perfectly straight. You immediately recognize that this is a well engineered place.

There were two FT-1000 radios with amplifiers set up and ready to go. Each had Top Ten band decoders. Either station was wired to get to any of the monobanders outside. Any category would have been easy to do.

Randy K5ZD

Above my head on a shelf were 8 rotator control boxes. Two were marked for 20 and 40. That left Marcelo and I trying to figure out which pair was which for the 10 and 15 stacks. I went outside, looked up at a pair of 8 over 8, and just ``assumed'' that had to the be the 10m stack. I figured out which box turned them and was ready to go.

Marcelo set up on the second station which was about 10 feet away. He would have to get up to reach the rotator controls. We were facing away from each other so there wasn't much visual interaction between us as we were operating. It really was two completely independent single band efforts. We probably shared about 10 sentences all weekend.