Miami Shipment Photos

These were shot by W0CG (that's why they are so bad) at Goose's, on the road, and at the unloading point in Miami. I left Goose's at about 10:45 on Saturday morning, April 21 and stopped for the night in Ridgeway, South Carolina. After Sunday night in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, I drove the last hour and a half into Miami, arriving at the shipper (Amcar Freight) at about 10:45, 48 hours and 1450 miles after leaving Goose's. A Spanish-speaking fellow brought me pallets with a Towmotor, and I unloaded the items from the truck onto the pallets. He helped me with the Windcharger sections, which were too heavy for one person to deal with. One hour later, the truck was empty, and I had sweated off a few ounces of flesh!


Goose's red barn is visible in the distance. This is in Wooster, Ohio, which served as a convenient marshalling point for the cargo during the months that we assembled the equipment.	The ground was too soft to drive the truck back to the barn, so Goose (W8AV) hauled load after load on his garden tractor cart. This is a batch of rebuilt optimized yagis, wrapped mainly in old bedsheets for shipment.	Loaded and ready. There was enough room for a few more cubic feet of cargo, but not much more. The large white box at the left is a new 50 gallon electric water heater for the QTH. (The old one is leaking and you can't buy electric appliances on the island.) The cardboard box in front of the water heater is one of five identical cartons containing the precut lengths of 1/2 inch Heliax.

You can barely see (click on the photo for an enlargement) the three coils of 3/4 inch Heliax acquired by N7BG at the last minute. They're stacked in the back middle of the bed.	A better look at the load. (Is my hair really that grey?)	Every individual item on the shipment was uniquely labeled. Here you can see that the water heater was "Box 28.") These numbers cross-referenced to line items on the invoices. There were 31 boxes, 12 bundles, 27 loose items, 34 tower sections, and considerable lumber and plywood for concrete forms. Click here to see the final packing list (a Word file.)

More of the labels -- here you see the base for the 45G tower and the gin pole.	A moment before departing.... Sue (W8AV's XYL) and Cindy are visible at the back of the truck. Typical Ohio weather for late April: cold, wet, grey.	This is Sunday morning in Ridgeway, South Carolina, at the motel just before departing.

A day and many miles later, here are the last of the tower sections being loaded into the warehouse. The shipper will then weigh, cube, and palletize all items. As a final step, everything is wrapped in clear plastic sheeting. This shipping company is VERY professional.	AMCAR freight has only these two semi bays.	Here is part of our load, on the warehouse floor prior to being final-packed on the pallets. Once the shipment is complete, it is loaded into a container, trucked to the port, and loaded aboard ship. the actual ocean shipment occurred 27 April, arriving Curacao on 2 May. From there it is processed by Customs, loaded on a semi, and delivered to the QTH.