My Ham Radio Story Part II - 1/16/14

It's been a little over a month since my last update and boy has it been fun! I started studying hard for my General shortly after. On the 28th I took and passed my General with ease. Took a week or two to get a new antenna and some coax in and I began setting up for HF. Unfortunately that was the week that the "polar vortex" hit the US. Boy was it cold putting up an antenna! It was 10° F (-12° C) at most. Often temperatures were dipping to -10° F (-23° C). Even after everything was setup I had some difficulty 'getting out'. The SWR fluctuated day-to-day with the weather. One day could be rain and it'd be great, the next it would be ice and SWR was horrible. Snow didn't seem to affect things much unless it bonded to the balun and melted when I keyed, forming ice. I ordered an IT-100 tuner from cheapham.com. They had the best prices anywhere! Frank was able to ship same business day and I had it the next day from New Jersey! After hooking it up, I has hitting DX that a lot of experienced operators have never reached. I was even able to get Aland Islands in Finland. I have a friend in mainland Finland who said even he had only talked to them a couple of times! At the time I am writing this I have 35 logged QSOs and 7 QSLs. I have 4 of 6 continents for WAC and 26 DXCCs.