A failure, and a new adventure

Fall has arrived.  And my goal to operate 100 days portable this year is all but lost.  My motivation was weak and I lost focus sometime through the summer and had no external motivation driving me on.  Unfortunately, there will be no 100 Days of Summer.  That said, I still have the kits from Etherkit that I'd like to give away, so once I figure out how to do that effectively, I will have a post describing how to enter!  Keep an eye out for that.

I found out in mid September that I am going to be permanently reassigned to Rockwell Collins' facility in Richardson, TX starting in November.  This is a pretty big deal, I mean, everything in Texas is BIG!  The good news is, I volunteered so I'm quite excited to be moving someplace warm (and sometimes HOT) that will allow more outdoor activities almost year round.  Not only that, but there are actually people I know living there so it should make my IRL social experience better.  I have had the worst time finding like-minded people here in Cedar Rapids.  I should have much better luck down there.  I could spend a lot of words listing the exciting new and better opportunities I'll have there but you will see them in time as I experience them first hand and report back here and on Twitter.

Of course this move means I have to dismantle my station, which I've already done, save for removing the mast and hex beam.  All the radios are packed up and I'm essentially off the air until we get established in Texas.  Furthermore, we're going to be apartment based until we find a house to buy but as I mentioned, the opportunities for portable operations should be numerous.  I think there's even a fairly active QRP community down there, so maybe I will have some extra external impetus to get out.  It doesn't look like there's any SOTA summits very close so I don't think I'll be doing much of that in the coming months, but flights to Colorado are cheap so I may make it out there more too.

Speaking of travelling, we'll finally be within driving distance of a couple cruise ports (Galveston and New Orleans) so that means we'll probably find ourselves at sea a bit more, which is certainly exciting.  I'm still hoping I can operate /MM one of these days.

I'm still planning on attending Dayton in 2015 with the N0MA Radio Farm group but we will see.  I think money is due soon and we're still trying to figure out how vacation and everything will work when we move but it seems like I'll probably have the vacation to go and I figured it will probably only cost an extra $50 or so to fly than it did for me to drive myself from Iowa.  We will see, when the money comes due, I'll have to decide what to do I guess.  I would really hate to miss it again, it is just too much fun to miss!

That's about it for now, the next time you hear from me, it'll probably be from our new QTH!  Thanks for reading as always! 73 de W0EA/5 (that's going to take some getting used to)