I left their home at zero-dark-thirty and headed straight down I-40. In the panhandle of Texas when you say straight, you actually mean it.
Once there, I tweaked the position of the car to make sure that I was right on the grid line, which is the 100° longitude line. That didn’t coincide with the state border. Reading up on the history of the nearby town of Texola, population 36, it stated that many homes over the years of a border dispute moved back and forth between Texas and Oklahoma. That must have been fun.
I got there a bit early, so after setup I was able to get on a couple of satellite passes earlier than I planned. I worked XW-2F at 12:15 UTC (1 QSO), CAS-4B right after that (3 QSOs), FO-29 (3 QSOs), XW-2C (1 QSO), CAS-4B (5 QSOs), and SO-50 (8 QSOs). All QSOs are now on Logbook of the World and most are already confirmed.
After that I shut down and headed a bit north-west to Pampa for lunch and then drove through Borger where my son-in-law works. Finally making it back to Amarillo. I really appreciate the broad sweep of the prairie in the Texas Panhandle. It goes from perfectly flat farm land into some wide and deep ravines. I wrote about my appreciation for this land in my blog post Living in a Noisy World — Listening for the Prairie’s Whispers.
On my next visit to Amarillo, I’ll have to give serious consideration to 102° longitude and the grid line between DM85/DM95.
