VW WESTPHALIA MOBILE

Hey, I wanted to look a bit younger here so I used a 9 year old photo.  The VW has not changed, still looks and runs great.

Drive somewhere and setup your own DX-pedition.  This could be the Sahara but it is Joshua Tree National Park about 60 miles east of Palm Springs California.  Go there in April and if it has recently rained, you will see beautiful and colorful desert wild flowers.  I'll post some photos soon.  Anyway, pack your lunch, gas up and get going.

Some favorite locations in So. Cal include: Newport Beach Back Bay road, Huntington Beach Pier or Bolsa Chica Wetlands, various harbors around the city of Long Beach, state parks south of Corona Del Mar.  Each of these locations are scenic and have miles of trails for walking and bicycle riding.

My portable operation began years ago with a 440 Mhz nuvistor transceiver featured in the ARRL Handbook.   Following the Heath Lunch Box craze I moved up to 6 meter AM mobile.  After school and when I got a real job, HF SSB mobile was achieved.  More recently and with the VW Westphalia, a Kenwood TS450SAT and Hustler HF whip worked for 40 meters. The compact size of the Icom 706 MkI was perfect and replaced the Kenwood.  It emits through a LDG Auto-tuner which tunes or matches antenna lengths from 102 to 210 inches for 20 through 6 meter SSB operation.   The LDG fine-tunes 80 and 40 meter resonators increasing useable bandwidth.  Click here for a peek at the antenna, details later. 

An SGC 500 Watt Amp is in the future but I suspect the power will have to be set down to 150 Watts or so.  VW electrical parts are very pricey so I'm not about to experiment in this department

JR7AID JAMAGATA, JAPAN

EA8AG ISLAS CANARIAS, SPAIN