04/05/2017z

"Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death!"  -Patrick Henry 1775-.  Tonight I return to the South, landing in the capitol of the Confederacy.  However, before Jefferson Davis resided in the Confederate White House, Patrick Henry uttered these famous words leading to the Revolutionary War at St. John's Church.  I have been interested in Civil War history for a long time.  Richmond has been on my list of cities to visit for a long time.  The interesting thing is how close the Confederate capitol was to the United States capitol.  Some of the largest battles were fought during our Civil War geographically between these two capitols.  Fredericksburg comes to mind.  Toward the end of the Civil War The Davis family along with all of the Confederate government packed what they could and fled.  It is an interesting story. 

This is where I met Ed/KM4LT.  I tried answering other calls tonight but no one seemed to hear me except Ed.  He was calling CQ fairly slowly.  I answered him with a straight key and he seemed to hear me just fine.  You never know where your signal is landing.  Ed's radio is a FT-840 and was running 10 watts.  That is about all I know about Ed.  At about 5 to 10 wpm it takes some time to converse and so we didn't get a lot of information exchanged during the QSO.  Still I thank Ed for catching my call and talking to me.  I wonder if I will stay in the South tomorrow or if I will get to a different part of the United States.  I hope we find out and the daily QSO's continue.