Saturday, October 12, 2013

The Time Has Come The Walrus Said...

Actually, it wasn't a walrus. It was the calendar. My original plan at the beginning of 2012 was to park the ham shack trailer, finish moving into the new house and complete the renovations. Then I planned to erect the tower and antennas and put together the station in time for the CQ World-Wide contest at the end of October. But when October 2012 came around, however, I realized that there hadn't been nearly enough progress on the house yet. If I got distracted playing radio I knew I would never get the renovations finished so I reluctantly put off the station building for just one more year.

This week I looked at the calendar and realized that if I really wanted to be on the air for CQWW 2013 I had less than two weeks to get everything prepared. There was no way I was going to miss another contest season so I decided to go for it. It isn't a lot of time (two weekends and eight evenings!) but there are a few things working in my favor. Number one is the fact that it is still autumn here. While that may not sound unusual for mid-October, in this neck of the woods mid-October is typically full-on winter! Think what you might about global warming but temperatures this month have been running 10-12 degrees above normal. Instead of snow and ice it is still above freezing here and the forecast is calling for more of the same. The second advantage is that most of the indoor stuff is already assembled and ready to move over from the old trailer shack.

With all this in mind I sat down and made up a task list of everything that had to be completed before Friday, October 25, and sorted and prioritized it. There doesn't seem to be any reason that I shouldn't be able to get it all done in the allotted time so let's go!

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