Well 2015 Field Day is approaching and I’m the captain of the digital station. My personal HF station has been down for about 6 months now due to antenna issues and me not able to climb my tower to fix those issues. Well I did manage to climb on Sunday as black clouds where looming south of my QTH as a thunderstorm was heading my way. I pulled the Icom AH-4 down from the 45 foot mark down to the ground so I can get a look at it and see what’s wrong. Was going to put up my Cobra Senior but it seems that my ropes and pullys in the pine trees have some issues… like me not being able to lower the AH-4 wires down and pull the Cobra Senior up. Weather turned to crap shortly after I brought the AH-4 down so the Senior install will be another day (maybe today!)

Once the antenna is up, I plan on trying out my new toy… IC-7200 Camo Edition. Don’t know why but I’ve had a thing for this rig ever since I saw the first one down in Orlando at Hamcation. Gigaparts is the only supplier that has the painted versions available and only those are available now for some reason. Do a search for IC-7200 and all major suppliers are out of stock. Supposed to be a “parts supply shortage”. Who the heck knows…

This is a good rig for digital ops which I mainly operate so I’m going to be testing it out before Field Day. Have to get use to not having to hookup a Signalink USB device like I use on my IC-756ProIII and IC-718. Now that I have this rig, I’m going to have to cull out some of my Icom stock. Currently I have 2 IC-718 rigs, IC-746Pro, IC-758ProIII, IC-703 QRP rig and an ICOM M-710 marine rig for Amateur use.

I will have to say that I have ordered quite a few things in the past few weeks and I have nothing to say but good things about ordering on-line from both GigaParts and HRO. All the orders were at my doorstep within two days of my order and both provided updates via email. Nice to do business with those folks!

I’ll report back later when I’m on the air!

…DOUG
KD4MOJ