My new Pathtag has finally arrived!

Well, it has been a long 3 months since I made the decision to get a new pathtag! But today they finally arrived! Just as well, as I have about 15 outstanding trades that have been patiently waiting for me to have the pathtags in hand for over a month. Mostly, they are going to the USA to trade with other geocaching ham operators but it will be interesting to see where they end up in the world.

Over the next few months, I will be arranging some changes to my first pathtag, namely getting rid of the glitter and adding a translucent darker blue instead, and will go ahead and get a refill made. The bonus of refills is that the base quantity you receive is 100 tags, whereas when you order your  first starter kit you only get 50 tags.

This was the blueprint of the pathtag sent for production:

and this is the finished pathtag (about the size of a 10c coin):

Antenna Winders

Don’t you just love when parcels arrive? Especially when they contain stuff for playing radio! I have been on a search for some winders to store my antenna wire when I go portable. I love the design of the SotaBeams winders, however the cost when postage was included didn’t make them so attractive especially when I usually pay extra for trackable mail when it comes from overseas. Yes, I am quite stingy, and love a bargain so I decided to do some internet searching for some winders.

My first stop is always Ebay, and even better Ebay international however Ebay turned out to be a fail. So next stop was Mr Google and whilst he did give me plenty of websites to search, I stumbled upon a site called Kitepower and low and behold, I found what I was looking for. In the picture they were plain black (with other colours available but you don’t get a choice), in small or large sizes, no bells and whistles and only $4.00 each. Postage was  $9.45 so I purchased 3 and for $4.00 extra, I also added in 2 small hand winders with 45m of lightweight string already rolled on each one. Plus, I couldn’t help but buy from a company when they have a great sense of humour which is so uncommon these days. Check out this listing on their site for a laugh: http://www.kitepower.com.au/cardboard-line-winder.html

So fast forward a couple of days and guess what? They are candy-coloured girly ones and even came with the elastic, which I thought I would have to add myself. I got the large ones which are 18cm wide, 7cm from top to bottom and are about 5mm thick and they weigh about 45g each so not too bad. I’m pretty happy with them and they will last for a while I think as they feel quite robust, but time will of course tell. So today I will be measuring, cutting, splitting and winding! 🙂