I've just spent a few very pleasant days south of Sydney at Gerroa.We hired a house on a hill looking out over the beach and I took a Yaesu FT-817 and a slightly modified MFJ random wire tuner along for fun (all I did was add banana sockets for attaching a wire to it).
I strung out about 20m of wire from the balcony to a piece of wood in the yard and it tuned up nicely on 80m, 40m, and 20m. Had a few contacts running just 2.5W (on the in-built rechargeable batteries).
80m is blotted with interference at home. At this location it was magnificently quiet until about 5:30pm when bad televisions get turned on. I really want to find a location with no noisy power lines or TV sets to disturb by HF listening.
Only a few contacts, mostly listening. Just before we packed up I tuned around on 2m and found a very active local community.
Spent the time reading the ARRL Handbook, 2007 and a book by Melvyn Bragg, both really dense and fascinating.
On our last morning, went for a walk with my wife who slipped on a ramp and broke her leg. So quick, so easy. My thanks go out to the good folks of Gerroa who helped us to a car, a doctor and a hospital.
It's amazing how easily we can be injured. Such fragile creatures.
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