Ham Radio Withdrawals

My HF/VHF base station radio equipment has been packed away in their boxes for a couple of months now in anticipation of the upcoming move back to Oklahoma. The antennas are all down and boxed up and the 80' tower is now gone on to a new owner a few miles away. This, of course, means no time on the air ragchewing or even just listening around on the bands. It sounds kinda cuckoo, but I started having ham radio withdrawals the other day. No, nothing like getting mysterious rf burns on my skin or hearing rare DX contacts in my head, more like just a feeling of aggravation at not being able to partake in one of my favorite hobbies.

Then it dawned on me, I have a H-T that I haven't fired up in almost a year, so I dug the little Icom T90A out and plugged in the charger. I figured even though I'm too far out from any repeaters to make any contacts, I could still listen around the bands. If you're a ham, you know that just listening isn't going to be good enough. Well I thought I'd give the 20" Maldol MH-510 whip planted on top of the diminutively sized H-T a try out here in the sticks.

By golly the propagation was good that evening! I keyed up gave my callsign on the Lake Park, GA repeater some 40+ miles away from my QTH and lo and behold the repeater came back with nice morse I.D. answer. Then came the QSO, and reports of full quieting on the repeater, and all the comments like there's no way you're sitting in your house in Dowling Park and coming across full-quieting with a little 5-Watt H-T. For me, that was impressive.

It was impressive enough for me when I could stand in the driveway at Patrick's house in Mustang, OK and come across the Edmond, OK repeater full quieting with that little H-T, any time of day or night. But to do that with my little H-T here surrounded by all these tall slash pines and whatnot, I didn't expect to get out more than 5 miles or so. Maybe I was off on my expectations, maybe not. I just know that I've cured my ham radio withdrawals for the time being.