THE NEW ANTENNA ROCKS!!

Well, I was expecting decent performance out of this Cushcraft Ringo Ranger II, but man was I ever surprised. I finally hooked up my HTX-242 to the antenna and dialed into 147.560 MHz (our net freq), and in short order heard someone off in the distance requesting a radio check, at about 19:05 local. It was KE7CMB, Rich, transmitting from South Hill, near Puyallup. He was coming in very well, and he was hearing me quite well, as well. He was pushing 45 watts on a Yaesu FT212RH using a 5/8 wave Lakeview ground plane antenna. At low power (6w) he was not quite readable. But I heard him very well, and South Hill is 28.8 miles from here. I've been able to talk to some folks out in Tacoma before (about the same distance), but it was very much down in the weeds, hard to hear in the static. We had an interesting conversation, and it turned out that he was on this particular frequency due to the Graham Stake ERC Net.

Even better, just after finishing our conversation, at 19:20, I got a call from KE7AWU, Cheryl, on the same frequency, who was transmitting from Eatonville, about 32 miles from here. She was clear as day, too. I didn't check with what equipment she was using, though. I'm sure I'll be able to do so at another time. Cheryl was at the class in Olympia yesterday.

This antenna ROCKS!