2021 Road Trip - EN12: August 26, 2021 1400UTC

I have uploaded 31 QSOs from EN12TL to LoTW.

The location had high noise on RX however I was able to start as soon as the moon was visible.

I did not see many signals at the same time, but each cycle 1 to 3 signals would come through.  There were some difficult 1-way communications at times.  I had very high RF noise on HPOL and did not decode any 2M signals on HPOL last night, the only decodes were on VPOL.  The QSO rate for the first two hours was good.

At the end of the night, early in the morning my time there were a number of signals that were speaker audible.

The weather forecast for tonight is severe thunderstorms.  I am watching the conditions and will post updates during the day on whether I think I can operate tonight.  

See below for photos and more information

The activation location was on the Missouri River on the Nebraska side of the border.  There is a large old railroad bridge at the location.  During the day the bridge was under repair.  All night, about once every 30 minutes a train crossed the bridge. When the train crossed there would be very high RF noise for about 3 minutes, but overall this did not affect operations significantly.

This is a time exposure of a Union Pacific freight train crossing the bridge with the 2M EME array doing it's thing.  The trains looked like models at this distance.  Sound carried very well.  I also have some great videos.

This is the view just before moonrise.  You can see a white glow at the left end of the bridge.  I started hearing stations at this point.

Immediately after completing the 222 EME operation the sky lit up with lightning to the west.  I quickly packed the station, 4AM local time, and the storm hit during my 15 minute drive back to my RV.  There were very strong storms overnight and this morning, just ending a few minutes ago.

I will watch the weather today and post an update on whether I can operate tonight.