Air Power - Log day 7

Day 7-Nov 11th.

Today is Veteran's Day, and the closest thing to parade out here, in the vicinity of 29N 66W, is a flotilla of sailboats heading south for the Caribbean. We're like a flock of geese, honking and .... okay maybe not a flock of geese. We're not going to poop all over the islands, like they do in Washington, DC. But we will stay until weather makes us leave--unlike the geese in DC.

Yesterday evening's weather made for considerable motoring. Pretty much 3 kts from every direction, none pushing us where we wanted to go. It is just as well, as we plowed through rainy weather all night. Multiple squalls convinced us to to drop both sails. The lightening that went on all night made us wish we could lower the mast, but there were no instructions in our manual, and we're too far off shore to connect to U-Tube. Lightening going from cloud to cloud is nice to watch. When it got the early hours, it was striking the waters. If the moon ever came up, we never noticed it. By morning we were able to put the sails back up and get ready for a morning radio check in. The signal was unusually clear today. Probably, because the net controller reminded everyone yesterday, to increase the RF Gain, allowing us to send a stronger signal. That explains why I could receive emails and weather information, but I couldn't send one. When I transmitted I probably sent what was intended for the receiving station in Virginia, all the way to Alaska. We've now learned to turn down the Gain when we're not talking on it.

Sometimes this radio makes me want to choke the living daylights out of it. Depending on the frequency being used, it sets off lights to flashing, autopilot does funny things, you get the picture. It's a Poltergeist festival. What is happening, is the transmitter is trying to make every bit of wiring in the boat act like an antenna. To counter this, you place what is called a ferrite choke around all the wires. The choke works like a clam shell. Open it up with your finger nail, place the wire in the grooves, then pinch it closed. Do this a million times on each wire and your done. We have bags of them in multiple sizes. Just never the right size we need at the moment.

Only 600 mile to go. No worries, plenty of stuff left to keep us busy.

That is all news from Air Power for today.--Dave & Jill