[SECC] My 2008 GQP Experience by N5VI

[Van Richardson]

I’m an avid outdoorsman.  I hunt, fish, golf, ride bicycle, ride motorcycle, attend sporting events (mostly Braves games) among other things.  Camping, well, I’ve done it…it is an outdoor activity and because of that I should be good at it.  I’ll have a ball, take the 706, camp out in one of the rare GQP counties and be in a constant CW pileup.
 
Let me see now, I need a tent large enough from which to operate…the center height has got to be at least 6 feet.  How hard is it to put one these things up anyway?  On line all the reviews of this particular 4-6 man Coleman Tent say it’s easy to put up and good in the rain.  Speaking of rain, the early forecasts showed showers Saturday afternoon and night, then later in the week they called for showers just Saturday morning.  I’m going to the Paradise Fishing Area near Brookfield, GA which is in Berrien County, but not even half a mile away is the Tift County line.  I’ll be able to operate there too.  Oh, by the way, I’ll have plenty of time to get some bass, bream and crappie fishing in on Saturday before the contest starts at 2:00pm.  Got to take as much fishing stuff as I can too.  Oh yea, got to take two days worth of food and the trolling motor battery as well as a borrowed Honda Generator (thanks Bill, K4WPM).  Got to take some clothes for 40 degree as well as 70 degree weather.  Why don’t I go ahead and take all the spare G5RV and dipole antennas that I have.  Things are really piling up here.  How much room do I have in the back of the car (Saturn Vue)?
It’s Friday before the contest.  I’ve got to work Friday from 6:00pm until midnight…welcome relief, I end up finishing at about 10:00pm.  I’m up at 7:00am and on my way a little after 8:00 on Saturday morning.  It’s really raining in Newnan.  Looked like on the Weather Channel (Jim Cantore) that all the precipitation will be through the area by early afternoon.  Off I go.  I encounter heavy rain all the way down I-75 until about 40 miles north of the destination.  The highways are suddenly dry…there’s no rain in sight.  Wow, did I hit it lucky!  All the rain must have gone north of here.  I get to the camp site.  It is in the woods, not on the bank of the lake like it appeared on the map.  Bummer…I’ll go fish for only one hour and then setup.  It’s only 11:30, surely I can fish for one hour and then be setup by 2:00pm (contest start time).  I bait my baitcaster rod with the recommended color plastic worm hooked Texas style and make a few casts.  Suddenly I realize that there are some heavy clouds approaching very rapidly from behind me.  I grab the tackle box and head (run) for the camping area where my locked, full vehicle is awaiting.  Then it hits, very large hard drops, the kind that make a loud noise on the metal roof of your car.  So, since it’s the Master’s weekend I decide to listen to it on my XM radio powered up by placing the car ignition in the ACC position.  I then realize that at contest start time it is going to still be raining (Tiger is losing…a gent from South Africa is ahead) and the car is so full that I can’t get to the 706 or mag mount in order to setup for mobile operation (PPPplanning!).  It’s 4:00pm and I am frantically setting up the camp site.  About 30 minutes prior the rain stopped for a short while and I began setting up but the rain suddenly re-appeared and lots of stuff got wet, to include some stuff that shouldn’t have.
 
Now I’ve got to make a decision; do I setup the tent or attempt to get a motel room in Brookfield for the night and just operate here until then.  Why would I want to pack the wet stuff  back up in the car at midnight (who knows how long that would take) and go find a motel room?  I’m not sure I can even get all the stuff back in the car???  Executive decision time, pitch the tent and stay here for the night.  I finally get some operating time.  Pretty good pileups…Bill’s generator is working like a champ!!!  I decided since I was camping out it would not be appropriate to bring a “nice” computer, so I brought one old Win 95 laptop and then a much newer Win 98 laptop both loaded 5 years ago with Writelog via 3.5 in floppies, which is the only drive on both computers.  Hey, I tested them out at home, they worked fine.  And they worked fine during all the operating time, one even worked on battery power for almost an hour and one half.
 
I finally get the tent up.  I don’t know what time it was, but there was so little light that I could just barely make out the tent setup instructions.  I never did figure out that stupid rainfly thing??  I had every pocket in the tent zipped up, the only opening I know of was where the antenna coax and generator power cord made their entrance.  But, there were bugs galore.  I sprayed OFF until I feared my breathing of it would lead to some sort of suffication.  The ranger told me in an email that I had to stop the generator at 10:00pm for “quite” hours.  I did that and was prepared to utilize my trolling motor battery that I diligently charged a couple of days prior.  At 10:00pm I switched to 80 meters and began using the computer that had a charged battery as well as the aforementioned trolling motor battery.  Both those batteries gave out in about an hour and 20 minutes.  I decided to use the car battery.  I don’t know if you remember me telling you about listening to the Masters during the afternoon on my XM radio with the key in ACC.  Well, it was still in ACC position and I also realized that the door lights had been on a great majority of that time.  Yes, that’s right, the car battery was very low.  Not to fear though, I had found my charged camp lantern for light.
 
I decided it was time for sleep, I’d do something about the car battery in the morning.  It got very cold during the night.  I could hear the mosquitos buzzing around.  The cold seemed to “soak” through the sleeping bag as the night wore on.  I woke to a very crispy clear Sunday morning.  I then spent about one hour setting up a way to utilize the generator to charge the car battery.  I was afraid to use the generator to operate the radio and charge the car at the same time…more lost operating time!
 
The little bit of operating time I got at the camp site on Sunday was very good.  After the car battery was fully charged some neighbor campers agreed to keep an eye on the tent and associated equipment while I drove two miles to the Tift County operating site.  Upon arriving there I couldn’t get the 20 meter ham stick to work, but the 40 meter one worked very nicely.  I was parked next to a pecan orchard so I strung a 20 meter dipole and made a few QSOs with it.
 
I didn’t stay long at the Tift County location because I had the 3.5 hour drive home staring me in the face and I didn’t want to show up at work on Monday morning as a complete zombie.
 
Although I didn’t make many QSOs, I really had an enrichening experience and will participate again next year.
 
73,
 
Van Richardson
N5VI
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