Tell your stories of fun, problems, learning and adventure.
Last week the extended family gathered for a week in a rented house on a lake in Maine. I set up my Hf rig with a wire antenna in a tree and my home-brew Buddi-Stick vertical clamped to a deck railing. The FT-857 and 12V supply simply went on an end table by a couch with 75' of RG58 on the floor out the door to the deck.
I had some radio fun with my nephews. On separate nights I guided my 9 and 6 year old nephews through a contact with the same station in Poland. That was kind of nice since their great Grandmother immigrated from Poland, so they are at least 1/8 Polish. I also got my 11 year old nephew a QSO with a station in Croatia. Interestingly, my 2 nieces weren't interested in talking on the radio. Too shy I think.
Now here's the annoying part. Around midnight one night I wasn't getting any action on 40 or 20 on my end fed, so I set my vertical to 30m, cranked up the power to 100W and had a quick CW QSO with someone in Lithuania. I had headphones on so I didn't immediately notice the house's smoke detectors going off until I was almost done with the QSO ??? . It took about 30 seconds for the smokes to quit beeping after I quit transmitting. By then, half the bedroom doors are opening and bleary-eyed, somewhat annoyed looking relatives are coming out of their bedrooms with their noses working the air like a rabbits (http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o170/cockpitbob/Emoticons/ROF_LMAO_zps503195e3-1.gif) (http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o170/cockpitbob/Emoticons/ROF_LMAO_zps503195e3-1.gif). My wire antenna was up about 40' and the vertical was right at room level. I guess the vertical's sideways pattern put all the power into the house's wiring. That pretty much used up all the ham radio good will I had earned getting the kids Dx QSOs and promising to try to get them QSL cards from their contacts. ::) Oh well. Another learning experience. I kept the power down to 10W for CW work on that vertical antenna after that.