The McKinley campsite was haunted by clear cut operations that were, at some stage, ongoing. Loud equipment and vehicles were
visible from my site. The consensus was that the harvest went to Grayling for making chips for OSB, and that the land would
be left to recover on its own. I suspect that it will be replanted with Red Pine, to be harvested again in 30 years.
I had trouble getting my antenna into the trees because of my old sling shot and fishing reel. The rubber broke, but I had a
replacement with me. That only took a while to replace. The real issue was with the monofilament. It kept getting twisted and
knotted. I had a new spool, but didn’t want to take the time to rewind the reel. The trees were also closely spaced, making it
hard to get the wire up above the branches.
This is where my 30-year-old Icom IC-735 developed a problem! This radio has been with me everywhere! Field Days, special events,
boy scout and school demonstrations, competitions, and hundreds of portable and mobile operations through 23 states and Ontario.
It once survived a table collapse and fall to a hardwood floor! This radio was bullet-proof! But today, it stopped working on
USB and FM. My normal method for tuning up involved transmit a weak FM signal. Now, I had to transmit LSB by speaking into the
mic. This wasn’t a showstopper for me, but signaled the end of an era. I had a new IC-7300 with me, but decided to continue with
my old friend on LSB or CW. I only made eleven contacts, but that was an improvement over the previous two days.