[GVARC] May 1-2 Wings 'n Things ham demonstration station, W6H went well!

[Frank Fahrlander]

Hi all,

Many many thanks to Don Trigueiro, Bill Gleason, Thom West and Jim Loring
for all the long hours of work expended Friday, April 30th, which allowed us
to get the antenna and station setup. It was a lot of work but I think it
was worth it.  Thanks to Tony Armendariz and Bill Culbertson, also, for
getting the crank up mast for us.  It worked like a dream.

We operated with a special event call, W6H (Wings of History). We had a
total of 45 QSOs including 9 from Italy, 6 from Russia, 1 from France, 1
from Slovenia and 1 from Austria. (Sorry to tell you Thom, but that
Sardinian station you worked was actually in Italy.)  We had a pipeline into
Italy and there was a contest going on which kept them calling CQ! Operators
who logged QSOs were: N7FF, KD6CJX, KA6VVE and W6SC. I'm sorry that others
didn't get to log some Q's.  Especially Bill Gleason.  I owe you a few Bill.

Of the 45 QSOs, 12 were on CW.  All were on 20 meters. We heard a very
slight amount of activity on 15M but nothing on 10M. We put up a vhf/uhf
antenna but never used it.  Sorry to all those repeater users for not making
QSOs.

The club's beam worked very well. The 2:1 SWR bandwidth values for the 3
bands were 13.8Mhz to 14.7 Mhz, 20.9 Mhz to 21.85 Mhz and 27.69Mhz to 29.3
Mhz.

The 27ft mast went up very easily.  Jim loaned us 4 short stakes which were
easily put in and removed compared to the large ones we normally use.  Four
guy ropes were used at the 10 ft level.  The antenna cranked up using an
electric drill.  We manually cranked it down with a makeshift handle. No
effort really.  That worm gear really works well.

Station operation was interrupted several times for talks. We were just
inside hanger #1 and when talks were on, they needed us quiet and the hanger
doors shut.   I enjoyed 2 of the talks very much. On Sunday at 1pm we were
shut down to let the dancing dogs perform. Sunday, we decided to shut down
early.  Even doing that it took us to until 5:30 pm or so to see the Museum
in our rear view mirror.

A real kick was to see the 1947 open cab fire truck arrive Friday afternoon
from Ormsby Fire Brigade. We featured a snap of the engine with Libby, the
fire chief, sitting in the cab in our W6H QSL.

The event brought out some really neat people and great things to see and
do.  I rode in a Waco biplane and took over the controls of a really neat
cockpit simulator that was attached to the Microsoft flight simulator.

Seeing the Wings of History Museum contents, listening to the interesting
talks, seeing the hot air balloons, old tractors, old planes, old pump
engines and model trains was a real kick.

We've got a lot of pictures and I intend to send a few to Claude for
possible use on the GVARC web site.

   73 for now,   frank