DENA to BOST and Winter Continues

Cat Map - Luna

This past week has been busier than normal with a few unexpected turns. A medical procedure has set me behind schedule roughly 10 days and I'll be excited to return to full steam  ahead in about a week. Sadly, it will take much longer for my checkbook to recover. But, plans of our cross country trip continue to unfold as dates become more solid. Work is getting busy as well with many of our seasonal staff soon to arrive or already on board. Winter weather keeps pushing us backwards, Spring Road Opening (SRO) is underway but our temperatures are still below average and snow continues to fall. I have yet to remove the plow from my ATV as once I do, it's almost a guarantee of more snow. This is the main reason my antennas will be the last things to be disassembled (shucks).

Each of the National Parks are known internally by their four letter acronym. In talking about other Alaskan Parks, we refer to Denali National Park as DENA, Glacier Bay as GLBA, Sitka as SITK and Wrangle-St.Elias as WRST to name a few. Our next duty station will be BOST, so that is the reason for the title of this blog post. Our W1'land assignment is an exciting one to us but also very stressful. Not only do we have a 13 day trek across country (includes some VY1, VE7, VE6 and maybe some VE5 call area travels), we will need to find a place to live, get settled and become familiar with our new jobs and surroundings. This move effects everyone in our household. As you can see from the photo above, even the family cat fell asleep with the map of Boston! We have an exhausting schedule between now and our first day of work on the other side of the country so there will be no rest for many weeks. To put it into simple terms, it's kinda like going to a local Ford Dealership, picking out that loaded Ford Mustang and after signing your life away, driving it off the lot. It's all fun and you're enjoying that new car smell and life is good. Then reality sets in when the first payment comes due. Then it really sets in when you see how many payments you have left! Well, our reality set in with the "official" paperwork which arrived recently. We signed on the dotted line and it's crunch time!

With that said, I've had little to no time for radio. Often times, I will leave my rig on and monitor JT65, PSK31 or WSPR. This gives me a quick reference check on propagation should I have a few minutes to check the radio. I have plenty more contacts I want to make but obviously radio falls well below many other priorities. But I plan on making time for a few contests / QSO Parties in May. As June rolls around, things will become just to crazy to even think radio. A few weekends in May along with an evening here or there will be my extent of operating. I normally close down the shack by June anyhow as summer arrives and we begin our outdoor adventures. This year will be no different other than the fact that our shack won't reopen in Alaska for the upcoming 2013-2014 winter contest season. Unless of course another ham decides to occupy our dwelling. But for now, we focus on getting ready for our DENA to BOST journey in the coming months. Oh, and now I really have to learn how to spell Massachusetts.