Hi all. It was a beautiful day so we went out. We started with breakfast at the Newville Diner in Newville PA. After a filling and hearty breakfast we set out for Gettysburg, PA. Yes, that Gettysburg. We arrived at the first hill overlooking the town from the north. There is a tower here and it is across from the Peace Light. I started to set up and broke my tripod. The tilt control snapped. We took off to the local Walmart and got a new tripod which I resolved to not leave in the car during freezing temps. We got back to the location which I thought might be relatively quiet and set up. There were more cars in and out of the parking area than I had thought there would be but we were in a spot where we were not in the way. I did observe a van pull up next to us at one point and a young man (late teens, early 20s) jump out wearing fake military cammy and carrying an airsoft “assault” style rifle. He and his group went up into the tower and I believe he took some selfies. They departed a short time later. The wind was blowing relatively strong which made it chilly. Even Tootsie didn’t want to leave the car. Between 20 and 40 meters I worked a total of 35 contacts including some park-to-parks. It was a good activation in spite of the broken tripod. SWMBO and I are making a good team on these excursions. 🙂 We left there and went to the ATV lot in Michaux State Forest on Bendersville Road above Pine Grove Furnace. The lot had some ATV riders there along with their vehicles and trailers but we found a good place to park and set up. Yup. then I started making mistakes lol. First I tuned my coax to a perfect 1:1 on 20M. Yup. Tuned the coax without it being attached to the antenna. Luckily my long suffering wyfe pointed that out to me. “Aren’t you going to connect your cable to the antenna?” she asked. After I got it attached, I got on the air. Worked 20M for a while and then went to 40M to let the locals have a chance. Finally when we were ready to go, I looked at my antenna and LO! and Behold! the tilt had loosened and the wind had blown it over. Lesson learned. Always have the antenna in your line of sight. Also, always check the tightness of any and all connections on new equipment. How do you spell duh? Amazing thing was the last few contacts came in just fine and it didn’t seem to affect the SWR. We logged a total of 26 contacts there including some park-to-parks. We got home ok and then got all equipment put away and entered the qso’s into the log. Then had a catastrophe. One of our cats does not get along at all with the 2 younger cats. we try to keep them separated. I was carrying one of the youngsters up from the basement and slipped. He is ok but I am nursing a very sore arm/wrist/ribs/knee. Oh well, as the philosopher said: “you take the good, you take the bad”. Enough for now. Namaste kidlets