Wading into the sticky swamps

Rick Kenneally, Wilton, USA

Topband mailling list, 30 March 2002

Some of you may have heard me drone on about my inability to stretch an Eastern Beverage because of the presence of a rather large swamp adjoining our property. The warm winter never provided the freeze I needed to get across. Not to be thwarted, I got my hands on a pair of chest waders used by fly fishermen, birdwatchers and other assorted lunatics. This weekend, waders and wire in hand, I stretched out an antenna.

The plan was to install a Byan-style remote-controlled termination Beverage at about 50 degrees azimuth (toward Europe). I could see a distance of about 700 feet from the starting point of the antenna to edge of the woods on the far side of the swamp. My hope was that I'd find another 500+ feet of undeveloped woods once I got across.

Donning the waders (a first for me) I started into the swamp and found that (1) the water was getting way too deep in the desired direction and (2) swamps are sticky. Anticipating the latter, I had a cell phone in a ziploc in the pocket of the waders just in case. Anyway, the depth of the water prevented a crossing in the optimal direction for Europe.

Plan B was a wire at 90 degrees pointed at central Africa with the back end pointed at Arizona. This direction crosses a much wider part of the swamp, but wider also means shallower. The swamp was crossable, but it still was hip or waist deep for about 500 feet. Going back and forth across this would have been a workout in the best of circumstances, but carrying a large, heavy spool of two-conductor 16-gauge wire it was quite a challenge. Fortunately, the point at which the first 500-foot spool ran out was at a hummock large enough for sitting. This allowed me to spend time at making a good splice.

At one point in this crossing, I did get my feet tangled up and lost my balance. I fell backward, and suddenly found myself sitting in the swamp, holding my gear above my head, with the water level literally two inches from the top of my waders. Imagine what would happen if 40 pounds or more of swamp water suddenly poured into the top of my waterproof waders. After taking a moment to reflect on the absurdity of my situation, I reached my nice dry arm deep into the muck and pushed myself back up. After a quick check for leeches, I continued on.

Finally, I reached the far shore. Again, I hoped to find a good stretch of undeveloped woods, but was met immediately by a stone wall bordering a house lot. So the antenna had to end there - about 800 feet in total length.

I nailed the Vactrol-based terminator to a tree, connected a ground wire, sunk a short copper ground rod right into the swamp muck, and slogged back home. While the antenna didn't go as planned, I chalked up a nice tally of wildlife including bullfrogs, a cluster of salamander eggs, a painted turtle, beautiful wood ducks, mallards, a million spring peepers, and what will be a nice stand of blue-flag iris.

By the time I got back, it was too late to do any DXing - family responsibilities took over. But today I tried out the antenna. Stations east of me which had been tough catches before (WCCC-1290 and WADK-1540) were now daytime regulars with word-perfect copy. As for the RCT system, I tuned into strong 1310-WVIP-NY which is due west. With the RCT controller off, WVIP was S9+10. When I flipped the controller on and tuned it, I was able to bring WVIP down to just under S9. Not as dramatic as I'd hoped, but not too bad. The best part is that it is switchable so I can use the antenna for TA reception or for reception to the West.

So, I'm still waiting for that freeze to stretch out a Europe wire. But this wire should open up some new stuff. I learned that March is a pretty good month for swamp walking because the mosquitoes and other potential nasties aren't awake yet. I earned a healthy respect for swamp muck, and I also learned that waders are really fun to use. I'm looking forward to wearing them again while carrying a pair of binoculars and a dip net rather than a spool of wire and bag of tools.