Last night I helped my husband bring the ham radio cable into the house. He then did a LOT of soldering, matching up upteen pairs of wires within the cable.
Today when I was out walking Amber, he came out and said, “I told the rotor to move and it DID!”
I surreptitiously took this picture of him this morning. He’s now having the stuff sync up (whatever that means.) I guess it’s making sure all the equipment, both physical and electronic, are on the same page. Then he’ll start a scan that goes through the whole band width from lower frequency to higher, listening for someone talking. (This will take quite awhile, so he’s playing tug of war with Amber.)
He tells me that our new tower is in the 10 meter band. He has a short antenna on the roof for locals. The new one is capable of reaching people across the world from us, given the right circumstances.
Some people spend hours and hours contacting and talking to people all over the world. I don’t expect my husband to do this – unless he changes quite a bit. He DID bring a pad of paper and a pen so he can make note of the call sign and frequency of someone he contacts, so he can reach them again. He mainly did project in case of disaster, so we can find out what’s happening around us. He also loves a challenge. It’s also fun, so I’m hoping that he’ll spend some time just idly contacting folks. We’ll see. To me, it sounds like one of the old Flash Gordon movies with Buster Crabbe about a million years ago.
The big thing is, after months of work, it finally is working as it’s supposed to.
Mark one big project on our list DONE.

