[CTSARA] Field Day 2012

[Jon Perelstein]

There was a "slight technical glitch" in the logging this morning and we
have to enter some QSOs from paper, so there may be a bit of a delay
getting the QSO point data.  We do know that we had more CW QSOs than ever
before and more GOTA participants than ever before.  The issue is the phone
QSO count.  We think we were running just slightly ahead of last year, but
we won't know for a little while longer.  We did have far more 3A digital
contacts this year than last year but fewer of the GOTA QSOs were digital,
which means that we might have fewer GOTA points than last year.

We had an amazing 80+ people at Field Day this year, the majority of whom
are not associated with the club.  Our visitors included the senior member
of Stamford's Board of Representatives (someone around whom even Terry
treads softly), a couple of Stamford Directors, a senior police officer and
a senior fire officer (love that plural), a couple of Stamford CERT
officers and other CERT members, new hams, hams to-be, hams from other
clubs, friends, friends of friends, and people who heard about our Field
Day from the articles about us that appeared in The Stamford Advocate and
the interviews we gave to WPKN and WSHU.  WSHU was so impressed that they
sent a reporter to record the sounds of Field Day and interview our guests.


We had some new hams and hams-to-be from further up the line in
central/eastern CT who came to us because they heard about the great job we
do in welcoming new participants and getting them integrated into our Field
Day operations. We even had a teacher from Norwalk who took and passed his
exam Saturday morning and then drove straight to our site so that he could
celebrate with us and have his first QSOs under our tutelage.

We had more current members attend than ever before, and we had visits from
former members/inactive members whom we haven't seen in years (including
Dick Finn).

Every single person who wanted to get on the air got on the air -- except
for the five year old who kept telling his Mommy that he wanted to "talk on
the radio" right up to that very instant when he was put in front of a
microphone.

Some of the people who got on the air never dreamed they would get on the
air.  A friend of one of our members just came by for a few minutes and
stayed for the whole thing (when last seen he was helping to take down the
antennas).  We got a Stamford Police Captain to do a QSO.  The wife of one
of the Stamford CERT officers -- who admitted that she left the house
thinking that ham radio is "silly" -- stayed for about five hours and did
60 QSOs in the GOTA tent.  One former ham (a friend of a member) came to
scoff -- and instead sat down to operate digital when he heard us whipping
through 25 watt digital QSOs with the West Coast and Hawaii.

Thank you all for a great Field Day -- and let's put together a collection
to buy a certain member a new computer so we don't have any more technical
glitches in the logging.  I won't K mention his 1 name but F I think C we
can all guess who it is.

73s
Jon