Here is the plan for myself and Eddie Stephan on April 29, 2023. We plan to have Ossabaw on 40m for a 30 minute window around 12:15pm local time. Then we will do 20m to help anyone not local for the next hour or so.

Because it is two of us on one boat, we will do SSB only. 100 watts to a random wire on a 31’ Jackite pole on the boat. I am building a mount for it and testing it out this weekend.

Around 2:15pm we will depart for Wassaw Island. We will play there a little less. We’re trying to be back on dry land around 6pm to activate Fort McAllister before heading back home for the four hour drive. It’s going to be a long day!

Don’t worry. If you miss us, Claude Ray is going again in June.

We’re helping out about three people specifically in addition to just having fun playing radio on a boat! It’s going to make for some good YouTube footage.

A little info on the plan:

I have a 16’ Jon boat with a 20hp Mercury. It’s not made for saltwater, but I don’t care. It’s not the first time I’ve plopped it in the ocean, and it won’t be the last. I just clean it when I get home.

I’m building a mount that will use the front seat post hole to hold the 31’ Jackite pole in the air. The antenna will be a 28’ random wire with a K6ARK 9:1 balun. The rig will be a Yaesu FT-891 and a LDG tuner. I know it works because that’s my secondary (non-rove) antenna. We will have two 40Ah LifePO4 battery banks. We probably won’t need 80Ah, but better to be safe than sorry. We will also have a New Super Antenna as a back up.

We will dine on Diet Mt. Dew and meat sticks and bathe in sunscreen. The entire trip will be captured by my GoPro and our phones. I’ll upload an edited version with highlights of the trip to my YouTube channel, and on those days that the propagation doesn’t suit you, you can watch it. 😎

Eddie and I plan on rapid firing a dual Optivator activation, so we probably will rapid fire callsigns and reports so we can fit as many in as we can. It’s a long ride there and back! We hope to make many POTAfolks happy!