Hi Ken and The Gang!
Our FD was a great success! Three of os from PVRC manned the 40/15
station and although the rate was lower than we'd like we had a ball. One
of our ops had never used CT but we trained him and he grew to love it.
Some of the "locals" came by the tent and discovered the advantage of
computerized operation. They were still using those awful ARRL Dupe
Sheets.
The 20 meter station was manned by some of the NTS guys and they kept
their rate right up their with ours. I bet if they get into computing
they'll never go back to paper!
We've been asked to put together a complete networked setup for next
year.
Now some other neat stuff. Our station ran a 689 with an RS-50M supply.
We also had the big marine Die-Hard from Sears in parallel. The 2KW
generator was dead about 30% of the time but our station stayed on the
air with the battery. This lesson was not lost to the other stations.
We ran 1 1000 foot horizontal loop though a tuner, fed with open wire as
our only antenna. This worked great out about 500-750 miles but then
signals dropped right off. We'll be building a better antenna to work
west of the Mississippi next year.
We got a few new converts to contesting! These guys will be opertaing in
the upcomming DX contest season at some of the smaller multi-op stations.
Now the best news. The kid that cuts our grass some times was camping
with the boy scouts. Someone there set up a station and did field day.
He was able to get on the air, make contacts and got hooked. When he got
home from camping he came right over to learn more about hamming and how
to get a license.
No Virginia, (err Ken) FD is not a joke.
BTW, after Andrew in South Fla in '92, we had to rebuild a lot of
Cellular stuff quickly. Many of us on the recovery team were hams and
used FD types of lash-ups to restore service, later the permanent repairs
were made.
73 from Lake Moneysgone, Dan, KW4T
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