Lots of Wind

We've had a lot of wind over the last day or so, gusting well over 50 at times, but it's seems to have calmed down today. It's still blowing around 20 and gusting to 30, but compared to the last night it seems like a light breeze.

I got my gear out of the cockpit lockers and safely stowed on deck and lashed down under a tarp before the wind picked up, so once it warms up a bit, I'll tackle the transmission. I still need to remove the latches from the cockpit locker hatches, so I'll try to do that this afternoon so everything will be ready to go. It's a beautiful sunshiny day, so I'll do that this afternoon once it warms up.

The high today is 36, so I might crawl down there, but since it's in the shade and it dropped down in the teens last night, I doubt the engine compartment will warm up above freezing. I can't get out of here for another couple of months anyway, so I'll probably wait for it to get a bit warmer. I've got plenty to keep me busy playing with my radio.

Radio watch:

I've been able to make good contacts out to about 1,000 miles -- spoke to Bob, N0DFP in Duluth this morning -- but that really doesn't mean much since it's highly dependent on band conditions. Therefore, I decided to go ahead, bite the bullet, and buy an antenna analyzer so I can tune my antennas and get the most out of them.

I have an antenna tuner for my SSB, but it really doesn't tune anything. It just makes the radio think the antenna is resonant at 50 ohms. Therefore, while the radio may think it's tuned, a bad antenna may not be putting out any signal at all, since most of it will be lost as heat in the tuner coils.

Anyway, the analyzer will help me tune each antenna and find it's resonant frequency, i.e., the frequency at which it's most efficient. It'll also let me play with different configurations to figure out which one is best. I ended up ordering a RigExpert AA-230Pro which will let me analyze both my HF and VHF antennas. It's more expensive than the HF only one, but without it, there's no way to know how well my VHF antenna is working, so I figure it's worth it -- after all, it's a safety issue, right?

Although I've used my VHF a few times and the AIS receiver seemed to work well, I wasn't very far out. However, I did notice that even so my AIS, which transmits on VHF at 2 watts, wasn't picked up very well on my trip over here from Huntington, which was somewhat disconcerting. Chances are I need to replace the coax in the mast. I might do that before I leave anyway, but it'll be nice to check the signal and all the connections with the analyzer.