We had to make the choice between driving 110 miles in 90 minutes through the west Texas mountains to get to DL79 or cut our losses and just get to DM70. It was tempting, but we opted to only do DM70 and back-burner DL79 until after we leave Big Bend which will probably be on Wednesday.

We'll be camping in DL88, but it meets up with DL89 less than a mile away, so I'll be on from the line at various times from tomorrow afternoon (Sunday) through Tuesday. I won't be on from the line every pass, but there'll be plenty of opportunities to get both grids over the next few days, including on the linear birds.

For any 6M ops, I'll have the FT897D fired up and will be checking for band openings in between sat passes. If there are any trees of any height, I might put up a 40M dipole and keep an ear open on 7182 kc (+/-).

Meanwhile, we'll be out of cell and internet service while at Big Bend.

73 for now,

Jim, ND9M / VQ9JC Fort Stockton, TX / DM80