[HIham] Fw: Field Day!!! U have to read.. {01}

[Ron Hashiro]

Hey you all,,, read this, it made me laugh like ^%$#... it is really a
belly laugher...

This one will give all of you a good chuckle...


Field Day


I remember being really excited for my first Field Day event. I had
already gone to a few of the local Amateur Radio club meetings
shortly after receiving my license, KF7OOL, and was all fired up
for the event. Chuck,  the club's president invited me to come
and help out. They had about 200 members, and many of them
were going to be at Field Day this year, just as always. I was ecstatic!
 
Finally the big day had arrived. It was Field Day! I was so sleepy
that I could hardly get any rest the night before, but was ready to
do the  whole 24 hours just the same. I went and picked up Willy,
one of the senior club members whose car was in the shop and
needed a lift. No problem, I had room to spare, and he knew
the way to the site, some 50 miles away. I drove out
to the annual Field Day site with great enthusiasm, so much so that
I got two speeding tickets on the way there. It would have been
three, but  I didn't want to be late, so I outran the last state trooper
to get there.  Not an easy feat in a small Toyota truck, but I managed...

Willy kind of  freaked out when I did that, and was unable to speak
once we arrived at the site (thankfully he had a map to the site in his
front shirt pocket or I  would have never found the site!)
 
I got to the parking lot that the club had set up for Field Day, and
quickly  pulled behind a nice new yellow Corvette. My emergency
brake never  has worked right, but I figured that I could block up
the tires of my  truck well enough to where nothing would happen.
Looking back upon it, I guess I should have not parked on the
little hill, as my truck did start to roll forward as soon as I got
out of it, but that Corvette managed to stop the sudden
forward motion of my truck, really fast! I was glad, as Willy was
still in it. I wouldn't want anything bad to happen to Willy!
 
I went over and asked some club members to help me get Willy
out of my Toyota. They were a little concerned with his condition
upon seeing him, pale, sweating, hands shaking and all. This was
really too bad, as Willy was one of the clubs best CW operators.
He was unable to compete and had to be taken home. I guess
that Willy wasn't much for long drives!
 
Ted, Willy's younger brother, must have been in one too many Field
Day events, as he pulled out of the operation after finding out that
someone had carelessly ran into his Corvette. It was some Toyota
truck I was told. I guess my truck is a popular make. I wonder who
could have been such a careless driver to this day. Quite the
coincidence in vehicle makes if you ask me. I was dismayed at
such a lack of dedication on Ted's behalf however.  After all, a
car is a car is a car, and I was sure that Willy would recover
nicely.

Anyway, after a little while I met Bob, one of the 80-meter CW &
40-meter SSB operators and club treasurer, who welcomed my
offer to help, and asked me if I could get some rope to help him
better secure one of the supports for his dipole for 80-meters,
as the wind was kicking up a bit. I said no problem and
proceeded to my truck. Imagine my good fortune, as on
the way to my truck I found some rope! No need to walk
all that distance back up to the parking area. The rope was
tied to a nice piece of wood that was stuck in the ground at
an awkward angle, but I managed to get it untied and
gave it a good yank.

As I was walking back from my great rope find one of the operators
on 15-meter CW had something horrible happen! His tent collapsed
suddenly upon him and his operating station. He was quite shaken
by the event, and it also ended the clubs 15-meter station operation.
This was very unfortunate for the club. Later, someone said that one
of the ropes tied to a tent stake got cut lose from the stake and a gust
of wind came along and caused the tent to capsize. Odd, you would
have thought that such a well-prepared Amateur Radio club such as
this would have made sure that the tent was fastened securely.

Later on that evening the club had its annual Field Day barbeque.
Great, I was very hungry at this point. I walked up and offered my
assistance in getting the fire started. Bob said that I could get the 
campfire
going.  So I went and put the wood in the place they had set up for the
campfire.

The only problem was that the wood had gotten wet from a rainstorm the
night before. I came up with a quick solution for this however, and went
over to the generator and got a five-gallon gas can. Nothing starts a fire
quite like good ol' gasoline! I just knew that the club members would be
pleased with my effort in getting the fire started once they came over and
saw a roaring campfire! The wood was pretty wet, so I poured on about a
gallon of gas or so.

Then I figured, you know, this wood is awfully wet, the logs are
pretty thick, and I really need to get this fire blazing for the barbeque.
So I poured the rest of the can on the wood. I decided to wait a bit
before lighting the fire, as I wanted the gasoline to soak in real good. I
walked back to the generator and placed the empty gas can where I found it.

On my way back to the campfire I suddenly saw a huge ball of fire
shoot way up into the air along with what sounded like an explosion!
Oh what bad luck the club is having this year, I thought. I heard all 
sorts of
yelling and screaming on my hurried trek to the campfire. As it turns 
out Bob
had tossed a match onto the wet wood, after putting a little bit of lighter
fluid on it to help get it started. He lost his eyebrows, his callsign 
cap, and
his new ARRL Field Day shirt in the event. I guess Bob didn't know the
dangers of putting too much lighter fluid on a campfire!
 
Joe, our clubs vice-president, asked me if I could help out with
running Bob's 40-meter SSB station. I eagerly jumped at the chance.
In fact, I was so eager that I tripped over a few large solar panels, 
breaking
them up pretty badly. Nothing a little glue here and there couldn't fix I
thought.  However, this really angered Joe, and he told me that the club
would be better off if I went out and did something called "Snipe Hunting".
So he sent me out into the woods with a nice wooden tent stake from the
now ruined 15-meter CW station to go and kill a Snipe.

Now I've been Snipe hunting before, but have never to this day seen one,
much less killed one.  And the odd thing about going Snipe hunting is that
when you get back to where you started from all of your hunting buddies
are always gone. So I only  went out  for a couple of hours to assure
I would be back and ready to operate  the night shift.  I never did find
any Snipes that night either. Boy, they sure are elusive creatures.

Sometime during the middle of the night the generator quit running.
All the stations shut down as the generator died. It had run out of gas,
and Joe got all worked up once he found that the gas can was empty.
I was amazed at how unprepared the club really was for this year's
Field Day. Joe, seeing that I had returned from Snipe hunting asked
me to get some more gas for the generator. I couldn't make out
what he was saying at first because I was so far away, but he was
pointing to me, and it sounded like he was saying;
"Steven that ool can't screw this up", or something to that effect.

I was impressed that he remembered the last three of my call letters,
not to mention his faith in my abilities. I think that by this time I
really had made an impression on Joe. Joe must have wanted
Steve, the club's secretary to take a lesson from me, as he said
for him to go and watch everything that I did, and to make sure
that nothing got screwed up by some fool.  I'm not sure why Joe
was worried about some "fool" messing things up, as this
club was supposed to be a top-notch group of guys, and I didn't
think that any "fool" would try to interfere with us... Anyway, I
grabbed the two nearest  five-gallon cans and took them to my
Toyota and proceeded out, along with Steve riding shotgun.
 
The gas station was a good ways away, but I managed to shave off a
few  minutes by making a quick detour down one of the older roads
in the area. I guess that Steve wasn't as dedicated to Field Day as
I had thought, because when we came to a sign that said;
"bridge out", he protested my suggestion that we jump the bridge.
I knew that I could do it; my trusty rusty Toyota had made this sort
of thing before... Well we made the jump; it was only
30 feet or so across, and about 150 feet down. No problem!

Steve must have been really tired; as he apparently passed out
from what I figured was exhaustion about the time we went
airborne. So I dropped him off at the gas station after filling the
cans with gasoline and headed back to the clubs Field Day site.
Just like I figured, Steve just wasn't that dedicated to Field Day.
 
Upon my arrival back at the Field Day site Joe seemed a bit
irritated, as Steve wasn't with me. I explained to him that Steve
just couldn't handle the stress of the event and fell asleep
I think that Joe was pretty upset with Steve, as he kept mumbling
and kicking dirt around for a while. At least he was happy to
see that I had brought the two five-gallon gas cans back.
 
Now we were full into the night shift. Joe, somewhat reluctantly
told me that I could run the 40-meter station. I could hardly wait!
I had no problem with solar panels this time, as they were all
broken and piled up next to the trashcan. I guess that Jo
figured they were now useless due to it being nighttime and all.
I hurried into the tent to make my very first Field Day
contacts on 40-meter SSB.

Once inside, I quickly fired up the radio, a nice one at that
a Yaesu FT-1000D. I saw that the mike gain wasn't adjusted
properly, so I turned it all the way up and punched the processor
button.  I started tuning the amplifier, and then realized that I
could get more power out of it if I just kept increasing the drive
power, and tweaking the load and plate controls. I did this for
a while and it was a good thing, as every time that I would
un-key, I heard operators complaining about some idiot
who was constantly tuning up on the frequency. Odd,
I never heard him... I guess I was lucky.

So I continued to tune up the amplifier. Then yet another
problem arose! The amplifier,  which had worked very well
up until this point, had a very sharp decrease in power,
and smoke started coming out of it. I grabbed a cup of
coffee to pour into the small fire in the amplifier,
but missed, and it went down into the Yaesu FT-1000D.
Then the Yaesu made a few arcing noises and quit
I guess they just don't make radios like they  used to.
 
Well I couldn't get the fire under control, and had to bail out of
the tent, and it went up in flames. It managed to catch the
10-meter tent on fire too. Good thing the band was dead and
the club wasn't using the tent for the night shift. However, I
knew that this was going to hurt the club's chances
at another good score for this year's Field Day. We nearly had lost
the 6-meter station that Mike, the clubs VHF guru was running.

It seems in my haste to help put the fire out I tripped over a guy
wire, causing me to fall into a table, which broke my fall nicely
I might add, but it did knock over a five gallon jug of ice water,
right onto Mike. This was too bad, as I could have used it to
help put out the fire. But at least it did wake Mike up,
albeit rather suddenly from a sound sleep.
 
Joe, after being woke up suddenly when the tent he was sleeping
in caught fire (the 10-meter setup), was once again, pretty upset
to say the least. I tried to explain how the amplifier malfunctioned
and that the Yaesu was just a junky piece of plastic, now melted
anyway, but Joe didn't seem to care too much for what I had to
say. He really needed some psychological treatment I figured,
as he rushed at me, screaming, yelling, and swinging a
vertical antenna he had yanked up out of the ground at me.
I guess the several accidents at this year's Field Day and the
stress of operating for so many years had really taken its toll on Joe.

It took the club a good while to get the fire out, and once it was
out, the club had lost not only their 15-meter station, but now
the 40-meter and 10-meter stations as well. This was most
disturbing. It was just  getting to be daylight too. After the fire
was put out, I decided to go over and offer my assistance to
Mike, with the 6-meter station he was operating. Well
as soon as Mike saw me coming he started yelling for me to
go away and threw a folding chair at me. I guess that Mike
wasn't much of a morning person.

Well even though quite a few of the club members seemed to have
lost their their zest for this year's Field Day I sure hadn't, and I went
over to the 20-meter station, ran by Sam. Sam was a ham's ham,
a real DX expert. I asked Sam if I could help him out, and he told
me that I could do the logging for him. Great, as this was finally
my chance to put some contacts down for the club. However,
after only about five minutes or so, Sam told me rather
bluntly to leave his operating position, as he was getting very
annoyed at me and my yelling "Yeah, way to go Sam!" after
each contact he made. Gee, I was only trying to cheer him on.
 
Undaunted, I went over to the breakfast table to catch a bite to
eat. I figured that Sam would need my assistance again after I
had eaten. Perhaps then he would have regained his enthusiasm
for this year's Field Day. On my way back from breakfast I
nearly tripped over some coax cable that was carelessly lying
on the ground. With the condition that many of the club
members were in at this point I figured that it would be best for
me to move it, before someone had another accident. So I gave
the coax a good yank.

At precisely that same moment however, there must have been
a huge gust of wind, because Mike's 6-meter radio suddenly flew
right off of his operating table, smashing into the ground! So much
for the club's VHF station operation...Boy was the club ever
having bad luck this year. Well, at least I did avert any accidents
by moving that coax.
 
I continued on to Sam's 20-meter operating position, he had Joe,
who seemed a bit calmer now, logging for him. I didn't want to
further upset Joe or bother Sam, so I tried to stay quiet. I noticed
that their 30-foot tower that they had erected was swaying a bit in
the wind, so I went and got my truck and tied a guy wire to the
end of it and secured their tower to my bumper.

Sam and Joe were doing great at this point and both got ecstatic
when a P5 came on frequency and responded to their call. Then
I noticed that someone hadn't taped up a coax connector for the
station they were operating.  Wow, I would hate to have seen
them lose a contact or have another malfunction, so I quickly
un-did the connector on the coax cable, to clean it, then
fastened it back up and taped it up.

It really was too bad that Sam couldn't ever get that P5 to come
back again... I don't know what happened, and neither did they
Before Sam and the P5 could exchange signal reports their HF
radio quit receiving suddenly for a minute. We never could figure
out what caused it. It really wasn't a good way to end Field Day,
and just made this year's event the club's worst ever. The club
members claimed that a curse had befallen them this
year, and I was beginning to agree at this point.

I felt bad for the club, and I did have to leave a little early, as
I had some yard work that needed to get done, so I offered to
drive anyone home who needed a lift, but no one took me up
on it. Some of them must really be into physical fitness, as
more than one of them said that they would rather
walk home.

I left about an hour early, while Sam and Joe were still trying
to get that P5 back and make some more contacts before
Field Day was officially over. So it was a long lonely drive
home for me. However, an odd thing happened to me.
I noticed when I got home that I had three 10-foot
sections of tower tied behind my truck! Wow, this was
very fortunate for me, as I needed a tower. Maybe one
of the club members thoroughly appreciated my efforts
helping out at Field Day this year, and decided to give me
the tower sections as a surprise.

Oh well, as they say, there's always next year! And boy,
I can hardly wait to help out with the club next year at
Field Day! I'm already looking forward to it. I plan to be
much more helpful too.


73 - I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did writing it.
Clinton AB7RG