Ham Radio in the forest

Monday and Tuesday were predicted to be very windy days in our location near the Grand Canyon, and on the route that we would be taking to our next campground in Utah. We were supposed to travel to Utah on Tuesday, but delayed our arrival in that campground for a day so we would not be driving in high winds (up to 50MPH gusts were predicted).

As a result, we had two days in Kaibab National Forest with gusty winds. The winds made views in the Grand Canyon not so great (blowing dust), and the blowing dust also made being outside not very pleasant at times.

Carl decided to try putting up a ham radio antenna between a couple of trees, making use of branches pretty far up in the trees. He threw a stick on which he had tied a string to get the string over the branch, then attached a bigger rope and used the string to pull the rope over the branch. Finally, he attached a wire of the antenna to the rope, and used the rope to pull the wire up to an appropriate height.

This picture shows Carl working on getting the antenna put up in the two trees -- one tree is the large one behind him, and the other is the one whose trunk you can see just beside me.

After many tries to get the string over an appropriately high limb, he was able to get the antenna up and working. The type of antenna he was using was a G5RV Jr. (Instructions on how to build a G5RV Jr. antenna can be found here: https://www.instructables.com/G5RV-Jr-Half-Size-Ham-Radio-Antenna/)

He said that the signal that he got was unbelievably clear due to the lack of interference from other electronics in the area (especially as compared to our park in Mesa). He was able to make several contacts over the two days that we were there, including reaching out to people who were participating in "Parks on the Air (POTA)" in Washington state, Texas, Oregon, and Idaho.