Biggest lesson from today - operating a portable station away from a vehicle on generator power using a G5RV is a lot of setup work to do by yourself. I set my station up on the top of a WWII coastal artillery battery, taking advantage of the extra height and incredible view. However, this also entailed hiking up down a series of stairs with all the gear. Also learned some better techniques for using the G5RV. My intent was to use two painter's poles nested one on the other with a 1/3 of the bottom sticking into the top one. I attached the center point of the G5RV and then tried to raise the pole to the vertical. The bottom pole's top 1/3 ended up snapping due to the weight. What I should have done is run a line through the eyelet at the top of the top pole and then raised the center point once I had stabilized the pole into a vertical position. Also - I need to secure the guy-wires to the side of the pole, the guy-wires got needlessly tangled when I did finally get the pole into a vertical position.
The generator worked quite nicely - I had no issues with it at all. It started right up, operated quietly, and had hummed away nicely until I shut it down.
Overall, it was a good day and I learned quite a bit. Tomorrow's operations should go a lot smoother.
