I thought I might post occasionally and describe a bit of my kit building experience.

My Genesis Q5 30M transmitter kit showed up a few days ago. I felt it prudent to start small, hence the Q5. I'm the only one home at the moment so I thought this would be a good opportunity to get started on it.

I have a new soldering iron on order, FedEx claims it will be here tomorrow. I dug out my trusty old Radio Shack 40W pencil iron in the meantime. The first thing I did was find some fine grit sandpaper and scoured up the tip. Then with flux and 60/40 rosin core solder in hand I tinned it.

They just followed me home...I swear!

Got a little in the mailbox yesterday.

Just a short clip of the lash up I'm using to get on 70CM in the ARRL UHF contest. The drive on mount is made of plumbing supplies. The light duty tv mast slips in, then gets folded in to an upright position, and secured to the truck by a bungee cord. The mast can only fold to vertical in one direction due to the stop built in to it.