mmmm. new toy.

i decided to splurge and i am now the happy owner of an icom IC-7000 HF/2m/70cm radio. the vertical antenna i ordered for home hasn't arrived yet, and i haven't got a beefy enough power line set up in the truck so i can transmit at full power, yet, but i did drive around the corner to the top of the hill and plonked a 40M hamstick on the roof of the truck and played around with the radio, tried to answer a cq from a guy in new brunswick with the xcvr on low power but didn't get thru. i played around some more with the features and generally got familiar with the radio.

i'm liking the UI so far more than pretty much every other HF radio i've used.

i also cleaned out the back of the cab of the truck, some, which has been about 3 years overdue.

i've got phone lines running over my driveway that hang low enough that the brush the top of the hamstick, so running an extension cord from the house to have enough power to transmit from the truck is... probably not good.