Idalia

[cooter]

So far we have not been severely affected by Idalia. I live in Levy County, about 20 miles SW of Gainesville, FL.  It looks like the storm passed about 100 miles of so to our west.  I was up a few times in the night.  There was light to moderate rain and gusty winds 20-30 mph.  To be honest, I slept through most of it.  So far we have not lost power.
We are under a tornado watch til later today, and expect a good bit more rain and gusty winds. I have not seen any coverage from Cedar Key, a small gulf coast island community in our county.  NOAA says the storm surge there is 8.5 feet, and the tide is coming in.

[JohnyMac]

Cooter, thanks for taking the time to update the forum. 

our prayers are with all in SE USA. 

[Nemo]

I spent 6 years (04-10) in Dade City, Pasco County.  Glad I am not there now.  When we went down I made sure we would not live any less than 25 miles inland.  I figured we could get no storm surge and wind would be slowed enough that building standards would handle things. 

Rather glad we did not get a chance to seriously test my beliefs.

Nemo

[Sir John Honeybucket]

Looking forward to his next update.  We have a QRP CW sked in a few hours as a back up for grid comms.  I notice his county is listed as over 54 percent of customers without electrical power.  So It's a coin toss.

[cooter]

We never lost grid power, lights just flickered a few times.

A big thank you to Sir John.  If I had lost all grid comms (home phone, cell, email), he was ready to relay info to my family visiting up north.  Didn't need it, but good to know it was available.  We did another sked just a few minutes ago to test out Emergency soi.  4W CW on Emergency power (NiMH battery pack. Actually how I power the rig all the time).  Good signals both ways.

Emergency comms, one of the holy mantras of amateur radio.  Thanks for the kind wishes.  73

[Sir John Honeybucket]

Good signal from Cooter a few minutes ago.  He is using QRP CW.  We had an emergency sked, incase of trouble.  In short, he is A-OK, no need for emergency sked.

--- MESSAGE FOLLOWS:

HR NO RAIN SLIGHT BREEZE
NO DMG X GRID PWR
INTACT X QTA EMERGENCY SOI

--- END ---
 
note:  QTA means CANCEL, in this case, cancell the EMERGENCY skedule, it being unnecessary.

[JohnyMac]

I love this forum. We are all happily willing to help each other. 

[pkveazey]

Wow! The hurricane slid right by me and we got a bit of light rain from the outer bands. Today, I got up and the sun was shining, the temp was 76, and there was about a 10 to 15 MPH breeze. It was so nice outside; I went out and actually did a small amount of yard work. Yesterday, I cut all the grass but ran into one of my tower guy wires. Well that tug caused an opposing guy wire to break loose and I had to strain my guts out to pull it back into place and reattach it. At the moment, all is well with the world.