[K3PZN-List] 2006 Field Day

[John Hart]

To all,

If you didn't make it to the Field Day operation, you missed a lot of fun 
and good practice in operating CW, Phone, and the Digital Modes and all with 
only 5 watts output on batteries too.  Don't let the low power get you down 
as it didn't make a lot of difference in the digital modes as I still was 
able to contact stations in California and the west coast, Canada, Europe 
and even Northern Russia.  True, more power may have made the contacts a 
little easier, but what about the challenge and the thrill of the contact 
under such conditions.  If there was a real emergency, we might not have all 
of our high powered equipment to use.  The food was good, we didn't get 
soaked or blown away and there was no charge for the sauna at the EOC/FTC.  
Actually, it was OK with the fans in place (The A/C had failed a couple of 
days earlier, but should be back running in a couple of weeks).  When the 
rains came, you could not even tell that a storm was passing over, except 
that we needed to disconnect our antennas due to lightning in the area for 
maybe 45 minutes as it passed by.

All of the batteries held up and I didn't hear of any equipment failures 
other than one of my cheap coax jumpers that had a high SWR (It's history 
now).

When it came time to take everything down just after the closing bell at 
2:00 PM local Eastern Daylight Savings Time, everyone there did a great job 
in helping takedown and load the various cars and trucks.  It was a real 
team effort and one worthy of Hams.  It seemed like we were all packed up in 
about an hour's time with all of the tables and chairs just like we found 
them.

John, W3JJH will have the details on our Field Day scores soon.  (Not bad, 
so I hear)

See you all later after I catch up on some well needed sleep that I missed 
this weekend.  I will probably be dreaming with the sounds of PSK and RTTY 
in the background and yea, some CW now a then too.

John, K3KWO