Hi!

Tuesday was another busy day, with another 459.6 miles/739.5km on the odometer and adding the 10th grid to the list of where I have operated from during this trip. Unlike the previous few days, this was the hottest day - driving through desert instead of mountains and higher elevations as I had done in the previous 5 days.

As I was preparing to leave Las Vegas, I worked an SO-50 pass from the DM25/DM26 grid boundary. I only logged 2 QSOs from there. I set out for the Bullhead City AZ/Laughlin NV area south of Las Vegas, where I got lunch before an 85-degree AO-27 pass. For that pass, I parked south of Bullhead City on the Arizona side of the Colorado River, on the DM24qx/DM25qa grid boundary:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=15092323201430215166,3...

This was a nice pass, with 15 contacts in 7 minutes. Lots of activity, and not too much non-ham QRM except in the first minute or so of the pass. Many stations were able to talk over the QRM. It was hot outside, at 107F/42C outside, so I parked my truck to get as much shade as possible for this pass. Even with that, I was sweating a lot and drinking a lot of water to keep from dehydrating.

I had thought about working later passes on AO-51 from somewhere else in DM24, or possibly DM23. The heat was the main reason why I didn't bother to make additional stops. In the summertime, the area I was driving through (along the Colorado River dividing Arizona and California) generally gets the hottest temperatures in the continental USA - and I wanted to get home.

I will go back through my logs and notes, and post a better summary of the trip including the hamfest at the start of the group late last week. I can say that I drove 1603.5 miles (2580km) in 6 days, operated from 10 grids, and had fun despite the high prices of fuel along the way.

73!

Patrick WD9EWK/VA7EWK http://www.wd9ewk.net/