Operating IOTA for 2018 solo again. Once again from the cabins at Cape Lookout, IOTA NA067. Original plan was to use wire yagi from June 2018 QST article. Weather changed plans….
As it turns out, lots of things were different.
More photos – 2018 K4Z IOTA QTH on Cape Lookout(Great Island, NA067)
Original plan:
The original plan was to operate on batteries at 100w using the K2 as the station. Original antenna plan was to set up wire yagi’s for 40/20/15 using three telescoping fiberglass masts at ~30 feet height. The wire yagis were to be based on design from 2018 June QST article(ref?). An additional mast was going to be set up for 10m/80m, using a 10m dipole that I would base load for 80m with a K2AV style folded counterpoise.
Revised Plan:
The weather took a prolonged turn for the wet and nasty about 10 days before the event, and forecasts for IOTA weekend were maybe even a bit worse. On the drive down to the dock the on Friday I hit light rain a couple of times. Also a short shower as I exited the ferry onto the Island.  No lightning, but radar showed active storms offshore. So the original antenna plan was trimmed to bare minimum – a single mast with multiple dipoles. And a plan for quick disconnects if things got worse.
Time Lapse video, mast deployment–>Â https://youtu.be/hy2bE-N47tI
After setting up the antennas and station, quite a bit of time was burned debugging […]
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