[MRCA] Delaware Goes to War AAR

[Ray Fantini]

AAR Delaware Goes to War, April 20 Fort Miles, Cape Henlopen State park, Delaware.


What was supposed to be achieved by this project?

Delaware Goes to War is an annual event in April at the Fort Miles- NAVRADSTA Lewes.  The Fort Miles Historical Association wants to keep this a WW2 only thing, but the Delaware State Parks people allow us to set up and display next to the Historical Association.

I planned to have the M151 mutt set up with all its radio equipment along with on air operations that included participating in the 7087 RTTY and MRCA MMRCG Nets.


What was actually achieved?

 Arrived at seven Saturday morning, I had dropped off the mutt the night before. Upon arrival that morning was informed by the State parks people that we were now setting up in the middle of the parking lot and that meant that there would be no shore power or place to set up the antenna. As K4CHE always says “Adapt, Improvise and Overcome” so first assumed without power and proper antenna was dead in the water and sent out word accordingly but then with nothing to do before the RTTY net decided to try to listen to the net and see if was able to copy. NCS K4NYW was booming in so decided to run the transmitter up and was able to log into the net. I had good signal from almost all the stations including K9WT down in Florida, so I was surprised how well the vertical on the mutt preformed with no counterpoise or ground. I did have to run the engine on the mutt to power the radio. Checked into the MMRCG 7296 USB net at ten local, once again had sold copy on NCS and many of the stations. After that tuned for M&S net on 5357 and while tuning and testing the set up for sixty meters talked with Ron K3TZJ on 5357 for several minutes. Was not able to copy NCS on M&S net but did hear several stations and was told later that N2MS had good copy on me but without hearing NCS did not make the scene.


What aspects of the project work?

I worked the RTTY Net on 7087 including copying the K4NYW special event NAVRADSTA Lewes bulletin. I worked the 7296 MMRCG Net went without issue although some of the stations were weekly copied. Did not work the 5357 M&S Net but did have a good contact with K3TZJ on sixty before the Net. Played around with the receiver listening to several other QSO and seeing what the antenna was picking up but due to power issues did no more transmitting.

People always enjoy seeing the mutt and all the radio along with the PRC-77 display that I put out, everyone loves the PRC-25/77


  What didn't work and why?

 I wasted maybe an hour moping around and complaining about the changes before finally just getting down to business and working with what’s at hand. The vertical works, maybe that’s why it was installed on the mutt in the first place, assumed would only be using the engine for driving on and off the trailer and maybe a short cruse around the park but ended up running it a lot more then planed and only had about an eighth of a tank of gas. This required me to reduce the length of transmissions due to not being able to run the engine the entire time. Ran the receiver for around three hours without the amplifier and at four that afternoon when I went to start the mutt the battery was dead. This required getting help and jumper cables and all that sort of stuff to get the mutt started again, never did run out of gas.


 What would you change if given a second chance?

Have at least a half a tank of gas. Have Hagerstown coming up in a couple weeks and will be running the engine there a lot so it’s not like that’s a problem, but having too little gas is. May try to talk to the state park people and see if we can get all the post war vehicles in a different location on the perimeter of the parking lot and do the full-size antennas. The State Park people at Fort Miles have gone thru a bunch of changes so that will be a challenge. The people in the Fort Miles Historic association are only interested in WW2 so they may not be of much help, or at least that’s how it’s been in the past.


Although there have been issues with the event it was well attended and I did have the opportunity to drag everything out in the field and operate, As Joe WA4VAG use to say “Field radios are only happy in the field” the Delaware Goes to War event is an event where you can operate from the field, maybe have to improvise and may not accomplish all your goals but being able to accomplish this and in front of people who maybe also interested in what’s going on has its own benefits.


Ray F/KA3EKH
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/mrca/attachments/20240421/c92fba1d/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: IMG_1836.JPG
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 768457 bytes
Desc: IMG_1836.JPG
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/mrca/attachments/20240421/c92fba1d/attachment-0001.jpe>