Bozeman - Yellowstone

On Friday I cycled to Bozeman and arrived there in the late afternoon. The weather was great, as was the refreshing shower at Jerry's place. His XYL Kathy, was also a ham. By early evening and after getting stuff ready for the fieldday Jerry and I drove towards the fieldday QTH in Belgrade, just west of Bozeman. The W7ED fieldday-station was going to be setup in the backyard of Dale, W7NAV. Lots of place over here and big trees on the edge of the premise. Rich, KF7LVE , Don KC7EWZ , Don N7FLT and were already on the site. The caravan aka fieldday-shack was already in place and the mast for the beam had to be crancked up. There was also a second station for 20 and 40. Inverted V's and dipoles were used on the lower bands. We installed the camper and made a BBQ for the two of us that evening and sat under the shelter that Rich had already set up. Jerry made some nice breakfast the next morning before some 10 of us cranked up the tower and got the station up and running. Don, or Mr. Wilson, proposed me to do some needed repairs on my coax in his place in Bozeman. He learned me how to wrap up wires without tangling them up. I did some foxhunting on 2 mtr. and found, eventually with some help and patience, 5 foxes in the nearby woods. By the evening some 30 people showed up for the big club BBQ. Much from everything and all way too good. Ate a bit from everything and some kg's of meat and pasta brought my fatlayer back into business. During the BBQ I met many other HAM's from the club that showed up with xyl or children. One of them, and certainly not the least is Robert, W7LR, the ON-suffix UN and WW were very well known by him. You should QRZ him..

I manned the station with Don/FLT during the night until 0430. I slept some 3 hours before another one of Jerry's nice breakfasts. We ended by noon with some 800 qso's in total. I heard almost exclusively US and Canadian stations on 80, 40 and 20. By mistake I heard and LA and OM station on 17..

The weather continued to be perfect. We broke the station down and it was time to say goodbye to the bunch of HAM's of Bozeman and around. I'll always have a very nice memory on this fieldday over here.

Jerry and I drove back to his QTH were we tried to find out what had to be the best way to enter Yellowstone. It was some 120 km. until the west entrance. The best option was to take the , on Monday very busy and narrow road 91 that lead into the Parc. A bus brought me halfway and from here I cycled the remaining part of Monday to the entrance. Jerry brought me with his car very early in the morning to one of the stops just outside the city after being his guest again over at his house and heaving a pancake breakfast and a BBQ , again ;-) , on sundayevening.

The campsites on the southern loop of Yellowstone are quite bicycle friendly, 6 dollars for 1 night and free coffee in the morning made by the local rangers. The entrance for a bicycler in the Parc was 12 dollar for a 1 week period ! The roads were very narrow and again, many big RV's, cars, 4by4s, campers and noisy moto's on the road. I saw many bison, elk, deer and other wildlife. No bears dough over here, but, so goes the story, they are definitely here. I visited the tourist mekka of the Parc, Old Faithfull, and many other geisers, pottholes with mudd or steam and also the Yellowstone canyon. I took my time to visit them. Almost I got driven of the road by a rental RV that was driving stupidly.. I found out that shouting out dirty language isn't so difficult.. I met Bojan, a friendly and wise Slovenian bicyclist. I also met Paul from Australia and Jack from Holland the next night on the camping. There were almost 12 bicyclers on the bike and hike place. There is always place for bicyclers here on the camping ! Good to know.

It was interesting to find out that my gasleaks were smelling like sulfer after two days :-) .

I was radioactive every evening and morning on 40 and one time on 20. Conditions were so and so. Again, many people were qrv on 7177. I cycled out of Yellowstone on Friday and left the 2000+ mtr. high caldera behind me after doing some nice climbing to 2760 meter ASL. I slept again on a cheap campplace with self registration fee just outside the Parc.

Over here I met Bob and Sue from Salt Lake who were on a small trip. I headed out for Cody,Wyoming the next day and the kilometercounter showed 4600 km..

ps: click in the right column on June for more pics for the fieldday and Yellowstone or go to http://www.gallatinhamradio.com