Although the Ironwood Meetup didn’t officially begin until today, I packed up and left Imperial Dam on Wednesday. Strong winds were predicted for Thursday, followed by rain overnight and into Friday, and I didn’t want to drive in that. Wednesday was the last day of the excellent and unseasonably warm weather we’ve been having, so I took the opportunity to get an easy driving day all the way down I-8 to the meetup location in Marana, near Tucson.
Unlike Quartzsite and the Yuma area, the desert in this area has small bushes everywhere, with only small clearings suitable to park in. Amanda and Matty were already camping nearby, and JJ was already there. We all scoped out a spot that would be big enough for everyone if we parked rather close together, and marked off areas for later arrivals to park when they got here.
My Amazon package arrived at my mail forwarder in Quartzsite on Tuesday, early enough for me to zip up there on the motorcycle and pick it up before heading east to the meetup. Thursday morning I set up my new ham radio for the first time, a Xiegu G90.
The only tweak I had to make before I could get on the air was adding a 12-volt plug to the power cord that came with the radio. It only puts out 20 watts of power, which is much lower than the average of 100 watts of a typical HF rig. However, the advantages of this are its smaller size, as well as a relatively low power draw, low enough to be safe for this type of power connection. I can plug it into the 12-volt outlets in my van, or into either of my power stations, even my little Jackery 240, for a truly off-grid portable station.
Not long after hitting the road, I bought an Alpha Antenna Full Metal Jacket with tripod to go with my old HF radio that no longer transmits. (It’s set up straight in this picture, but the wind is blowing it over a bit.) Another great feature of the G90 is its built-in automatic antenna tuner, something previously unheard of in a radio this small and low-priced. Such a small antenna has low bandwidth once tuned up, but the automatic tuner lets me tune it up wherever I am with a press of a button.
I tuned up on the 20-meter band, found a net looking for check-ins, and threw out my callsign a few times. A station in Portland, Oregon, K7ZS, heard me and checked me in. That’s about 1,450 miles away on 20 watts of power! What’s more, he told me my audio quality was great, and to not change a thing. The wind was starting to pick up, so I took down my antenna and put away the station.
My timing was good because the strong winds ahead of the “Pineapple Express” coming in hit us soon afterward. The steady winds kicked up to more than 20 mph. A 25 mph gust turned out to be too much for the poles that were holding up my tarp awning, which I’d set up in hopes of having some outdoor shelter once the rain moved in. I heard it come down. Yellow Wolf and JJ were already holding onto the tarp to stop it from flapping and causing further damage. Thanks to them I was able to take it down safely, despite the wind.
The wind calmed down in the evening, which led to all of us emerging from our vehicles and gathering between my van and Yellow Wolf’s. I’m not sure how we became the party area — we just were. Ron, one of the event hosts, came down to see what the hysterical laughter was all about, which he could hear from the event’s main camp. He wasn’t complaining, just curious, and ended up joining in our shenanigans. Suddenly the strong winds picked up once again as the rain moved in, so we retreated to our vehicles for the night.
We got 0.6″ of rain, and a peak wind gust of 32 mph. The ground here is much softer than in Quartzsite and Yuma, so I’m not even going to try to move until it hasn’t rained for a couple of days. I have plenty of supplies, and although the bike will stay in the trailer until it stops raining and the ground starts to firm up, I’ll be able to use it for supply runs into town if I need to stay past the end of the official meetup early next week. It’s a free 14-day dispersed camping area, so I can stay up to a week after the event if I need to while things dry out. I’m not worried. I’m not stuck now, and as long as I don’t try to move too soon, I won’t get stuck. It’s much cooler now, and still raining on and off. Between that and the soft ground, I’m going to be in the van for much of the day. If the wind remains relatively calm maybe I’ll set up the HF station again and try to make some radio contacts.
Slightly related, the dealer that sold me Smokey II gave me free access to its Carfax report, which revealed some interesting things I didn’t know about it. For one thing, it has a limited-slip differential. This is a wonderful thing I didn’t know about when I got it. In slippery conditions (like the road in and out of the meetup), if one wheel loses traction, a standard open differential will send all the power to the slipping wheel, leaving you stuck. A limited-slip differential does exactly that, limiting how much each wheel is allowed to slip, and sending at least some power to both wheels at all times. This gives me true two-wheel drive instead of the infamous “one-tire fire” that an open diff does.
The other interesting thing I found is that immediately after this van was built, it was sent not to Florida, but to Hooksett, New Hampshire, not far from where I used to live! Just ten days later, it was moved to Florida, where it was put up for sale, and then leased out for one year before I got it last March. My move to Arizona was recorded as well. Fortunately, the van’s short time in New Hampshire was in August 2021, so it escaped the north before winter and the salt all over the roads. The underside of this van is the cleanest of any vehicle I’ve ever owned, except for my Subaru BRZ, which I bought brand new.
Smokey Da Van 