On Tuesday of this past week I was in my office in Princeton. There are always a number of evening things I can do while in Princeton other than strolling around very quaint downtown Princeton from spending an evening with Joe & Marietta Taylor (K1JT) in there home, hanging out with the Pack Rats, or driving over to Downeast Microwave (about 30 minutes away). Steve, N2CEI, and Sandi of Downeast are good personal friends of mine so Tuesday evening I drove over to Frenchtown. Tuesday night is “Rover Night” at Downeast Microwave. Hams are free to bring their VHF/UHF/Microwave rover stations by for testing and checkout, tweaking or just to compare theirs to other rover stations. Last weekend was the first leg of the 10 GHz & Up Contest so some of the guys were dropping by for various things in addition to swapping war stories from the contest. It was nice enjoyable, relaxing evening that included an absolutely fabulous cheeseburger at a local greasy spoon diner with the gang.

If you have a VHF club or individuals in your area active in weak signal work or contesting drop by some time and look at some of the rover stations. Most of these hams are not able, for a number of reasons, to have home stations so some have really impressive rover setups.

Thursday afternoon I met with Dave, Chris and Paul Rinaldo at HQ to discuss our next steps regarding BPL then on Friday morning was off to Boxborough, MA for the New England Division Convention. I’m now back at Bradley Airport in Hartford on my way home utilizing the free wireless network here.

I’m working on reports pertaining to the meeting and convention and will have those out as soon as I get them typed up.

It has been a busy but productive and enjoyable week. Some of you have email and phone calls awaiting a response so I’ll start working those down tomorrow morning.

I’m looking forward to the next few weeks where my main focus will be performing a number of maintenance and upgrade activities at W5ZN!

73 Joel W5ZN