California or Bust

Well, my papers are finally all in order, I hope. Tomorrow morning I hit the road bright and early. The car is packed pretty full (take a look at how low it's riding in the rear). For those of you who haven't yet heard, I'm off to California. My route plan is basically to head for St. Louis then follow Route 66 the rest of the way. I will of course have my radio on 146.520 and 446.000 the whole time in the hopes of chatting up some locals for restaurant recommendations and such en-route. I'll post updates when and if I find motels with internet access. In addition to this blog, you might want to check out my Picasa Web Album for more photos.

Antennae for my FT8900

Ok, so I've already got my little Comet dual band daily driving antenna, and a Comet SBB5NMO dual bander with decent gain for both bands for when I'm "keeping it under 80". Eventually I'd like to find a parked / moving very slowly and carefully antenna, or maybe two. My mount type is NMO. So far contenders are: Diamond SG7900 (2m 5.0dBi / 70cm 7.6dBi) 600g, 1.58m HUGE and heavy, no NMO? Diamond CR627NMO (6m 2.15dBi / 2m 4.5dBi / 70cm 7.2dBi) 450g, 1.51m (does 6m!) Diamond CR8900 (10m/6m/2m 2.15dBI / 70cm 5.5dBi) 490g, 1.26m (gains kinda suck, but does 10m!) Comet UHV-4 (about the same as the Diamond CR8900) Maybe I should just do a 6m or 10m dipole. Of course that would have to be a stationary antenna. I guess I could pull the radio out of my car and set it up at home some how. It's not like I ever use it in the car, and the mount, while very professional, is a little noisy sometimes. Then I'd have a ham radio at home that I almost never use. Yay!

Drew's Ginger Vanilla Pear Conserve

This is based loosly on my Grandma's recipe for peach conserve. Peeled, cored, roughly sliced pears (4 large baskets, about 12 cups) Syrup consisting of about half the amount of pears as sugar, dissolved in boiling hot water juice of 1 lemon Toasted hazelnuts (not salted), cracked or split (about 1/2 cup) fresh ginger, grated might be best, tried chopped (1 inch or so) 1 fresh vanilla zest of 1 lemon or maybe orange Boil up the syrup, add pears and ginger Boil until the pears are soft and it's started to thicken add nuts, zest and vanilla, boil for another 2 or 3 minutes and then can.