[Elecraft] OT: Field Day anecdotes

[Henry Pollock - K4TMC]

Nate,

Nice stories! You gotta love those creative phonetics...

73,
Henry - K4 Too Much Coffee

On Wed, May 20, 2026 at 11:23 PM Nate Bargmann via Elecraft <
elecraft at mailman.qth.net> wrote:

> FD wouldn't be fun without challenges.
>
> I've always operated with in a club setting.  That in itself is a
> challenge but meeting that challenge will assist in developing
> interpersonal skills!
>
> As to the things I remember.  One of the first FDs I operated we were
> working Saturday evening and heard "CQ this is ??BE--Beer Everywhere".
> We got a good laugh from that.  One year the ops were puzzled as aiming
> the tribander (TA-33) east resulted in a lot of west coast stations and
> vice versa.  After staring at the antenna for a bit I came to the
> conclusion that the reflector and director were reversed on the boom.
> Some years ago we used the same antenna and it was marked wrong.  This
> time a quick search of the Web brought up the manual and the owner was
> convinced of the marking error.  The antenna worked as expected.
>
> Weather is always a factor on the central plains.  One year can be
> blazing hot such as 1993 with the Enid ARC (Oklahoma) when I think it
> was something like 113 that Saturday afternoon.  I drank water all
> afternoon and never sweated or went to the latrine.  Promptly at 1PM on
> Sunday we tore down in record time and I left the gear in the truck
> until around sundown when the temp got down to the high 90s or so.
>
> The next year the temps were more reasonable and operations were going
> well.  As we settled in for the overnight run we got word over the
> repeater of a storm front that was moving down from south central
> Kansas.  The park pavilion we were using had no sides, only a roof.
> After an hour or so it became apparent we were in the direct path of the
> storm.  I suppose we considered a few options but settled on putting the
> gear--radios and computers--on the picnic tables, sitting amongst the
> piles of gear with blankets and sleeping backs with our backs to the
> incoming storm.  It was an impressive sight watching the rain blow
> horizontally through the pavilion!  The one-lung generator never missed
> a beat and kept our lights on through the storm.  No gear nor ops were
> lost.  Seems we should have gotten bonus points for that one!
>
> Once the storm cleared the first thing to put back in operation was the
> coffee pot.  Priorities.
>
> 73, Nate, N0NB
>
> --
> "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
> possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."
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