Hamming along at 110 feet per second

Not exactly your father’s ham shack—unless your father drove semi trucks for a living and took his hobby with him out on the road.  To borrow a line from a popular military advertisement of decades gone by, ‘It’s not just a job; it’s an adventure’ applies to long haul trucking as much as it would apply to the Marine Corps. This isn’t an occupation for the faint of heart. It is an occupation with as much as 100% turnover at times because it really does take a lot out of a person. To be able to keep up with barely realistic timetables, constant governmental scrutiny, rising costs with stagnant revenues and the constant, inevitable interaction with the general motoring public it’s a wonder anything gets shipped at all. It takes a special kind of ham (crazy helps) to get this done and enjoy a unique mobile radio

platform from which to work the world.  Like I said, crazy helps.

   I average about three thousand miles a week on good weeks so I get to try my luck from a lot of different grids. Oddly enough, not all locales lend themselves to the hobby we all love so much. Have you ever tried to copy weak signals on (insert favorite band

here) just to have a guy in a passing truck go by yakking while putting out a kilowatt erp? That ‘Smoky Bear’ nonsense gets old quick as does trying to copy any weak signals from some parts of the road. It can be done, but is more challenging than usual. However, once BPL is deployed around the countryside, perhaps the only ‘quiet’ spots will be the hinterlands between cities. Lets hope it never comes to that! I have enough trouble listening around the harmonics caused by the voltage inverter that keeps my refrigerator and other comforts of home running. Days that see the crock-pot cooking generally see very little ham activity due to the noise and hash generated. Sorry kids, but the perfect mobile platform has its drawbacks too.

   When I started out on this odyssey, I thought (and still do) that a screwdriver style antenna would play HF very nicely indeed. Then that pesky reality hit and I soon realized that I really don’t want to advertise the fact that there is a lot of expensive gear in this truck just waiting to be used to finance someone’s drug habit. So I went with an  interchangeable mono-band whip. It works well enough with the obvious drawbacks. It also has the advantage of looking a lot like just another C.B. antenna, blending in very well so far. I will try a new approach using a 75 meter whip and an autotuner in the near future. Once my radio gets back from the doctor that is. Then you can find me almost daily participating on the 20-meter  YL-ISSB net on 14.332 MHz. A Google search on YL-ISSB will tell you all there is to know about them. They are a great bunch of folks to ride along with. In my travels I have tried with very little success to get information on VHF ARES nets. I am always too early or too late or wrong day or I am out of that repeaters’ footprint too soon. I did enjoy copying the mail on the hurricane traffic nets this fall. With the autotuner set up  I will be able to surf around with more ease than before and get to know the HF systems a bit better. Having current copies of QST on board helps me know  about contests and special event stations. There are lots of opportunities to have fun with our fantastic hobby out on the road. In between the naps, the diners and the scale houses that is.

   If you are one of those fortunate hams that happens to have your shack visible from an interstate freeway or a state highway, you may hear ‘CQ CQ’ by air horn. If so, then it was probably me. If you hear it on the road, perhaps I saw your ham call license plates going by. I use that car-to-car message less frequently though - don’t want to scare the motoring public unnecessarily. I will be home as often as my dispatch allows to check in with you all. Otherwise I can be found on the air somewhere. Till the next round, take care and very 73!     — Eric Stephenson, KK7UE