[FieldDay] Field Day 2002 - R.I.P.

[Greg Williams]

And what a field day it was!!!

I was pleasantly surprised to hear all of the echo stations on the air.  I
guess I wasn't the only one who caught the fact that so few were in the
final results from last year!!

The wx was sunny and hot during the day, but nice and cool overnight.  I
know our friends in Florida got soaked (one even cancelled their operations
this year) but it looks like wx across the US was pretty dry for this
weekend.

The field day logging program I touted last week held up perfectly!!!
Hopefully I'll be able to tally the results shortly.

One thing I didn't like was the fact that we didn't have ops going on both
stations like I had hoped.  My station was treated like the plague by my
co-horts and UHF/VHF and 6 meters were pretty quiet...which was
dissappointing considering the time we spent in setting up the 8-element
yagi for SSB ops on 2.  We heard ISS station but couldnt make the contact.
That seemed to be the only satellite we could hear.  Dunno why but the FO
sats and RS sats were quiet.  We didnt even try AO-27.

40 meters was booming for the full 24 hours.  One of the FT-100's stayed on
40 most of the time, but early sunday morning I commandeered it and ran 80
meters during sunrise like there was no tomorrow...until a couple of
stations decided that they were going to take over the frequency because
that's where they talk and "by God *NO* damned Field Day operator is gonna
steal it from me"...(his words EXACTLY).

Our battery box did its job the full 24 hours!!!  We were thinking that
SOMETHING on it had to break (as power sources would in a typical field day)
but it stayed the course during the 24 hours and was unflinching.  I took
digital pics of it and will be sending them to ARRL and SERA (by request) so
hopefully others will take these ideas and run with them.

I hope everyone had fun on Field Day and we're already talking about next
year!!!

Greg Williams
k4hsm@lock-net.com

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