[OKDXA] Field Day

Tue Jun 26 17:22:22 EDT 2012

Dave:

My plans are to come up there in October for the DX Banquet.  It has been
way too long since we have been back to Oklahoma.  I may fly in a few days
before and stay a few days afterward.  I talked to Jim Richardson on the
phone last night and he gave me a blow by blow on Mac's setup and what
transpired.  Sounds like the Mac I know.

I was deeply saddened by Loyd's passing.  I really miss the Thursday lunches
we used to have over in Midwest City.  I know that he was OCAPA's go-to man,
especially when it came time to operating CW at FD.  I had to do some work
over at my farm on Saturday morning and I dropped by the FD site in
Brookhaven, MS on the way home and they forced me to work their CW station.
I sat down for a couple of hours and made over 200 CW Q's for them.  I do
not think anybody in this club had ever seen anyone really work a CW station
in a contest environment.  Their CW guy is a quadriplegic and he said the
software was not keying the rig properly and went home.  He sat there for
about an hour and did some Search and Pounce and never made a contact.  I
ended up making 2/3's of their QSO points for them with those contacts.  I
talked to a friend of mine up in Starkville and the MSU and Starkville clubs
operated together out at Camp Seminole, north of Starkville, and they made
about 2000 Q's.  

Jim said that he dropped by the EARS FD site and that Tim had everything
organized to the nth degree, like a true contester.  I would love to go up
to Pennsylvania and see his contest station.  I have been to W3LPL's station
several times, he lives next door to Bernie McClenny, W3UR.  Bernie and I
knew each other through church work long before we realized each other were
hams and DXers.  He knows my oldest daughter real well from the year she
lived in Maryland.  My youngest daughter moved back from Philly, so I really
do not have a reason to go to Pennsylvania anymore.  Plus Tim's place is out
in Western PA.  I would love to see his contest station and get a reference
to W3LPL's station.  

I have basically been off the air since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  I have
made a few DX contacts and worked a couple of new ones, but I have missed
about 15 new ones.  I am fixing to put up one of the K4KIO Hexagonal Beams
at my house and I am going to build my retirement station at my farm with at
least four towers.  I have plenty of room for antennas with 305 acres over
there.  I have most of the equipment to put the station together over there.
But I will not leave my radios and amps over there until we retire there in
a few years.  I will carry them back and forth.  We do not have any
neighbors for several miles and I think the towers would invite burglars.
The county only has 8,100 people and over half the county is National Forest
and then the paper companies own a lot of land.  I have paper company land
to my north, east, and west and then the National Forest is on the south end
of our farm.  I do not have to worry about causing TVI with anyone out
there, either.

I am sitting at 316, but I have not even worked the new entities in the
Caribbean or South Sudan yet.  So when I get my antenna up at the house I
think I can get to 321 pretty quick.  Most of the ones I need are in the top
twenty most wanted, so it will take me a long time to work them.  But I will
keep poking away at it.  Wish I could come up for Ham Holiday, but we have
been doing a large Oracle ERP implementation and I have not got to do
anything outside of work.  I look forward to seeing you guys in October!

73,
Alan Clark, N5PA
Ellisville, MS
Email:  n5pa at n5pa.com 
URL:     http://www.n5pa.com 

-----Original Message-----
From: dave [mailto:ddgold at cox.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2012 11:47 AM
To: 'DX news and information'
Subject: Re: [OKDXA] Field Day

Hi Alan -

Good to hear from you.

All is well here. Field Day went pretty smoothly. We had to replace an 80-ft
run of coaxial cable that was bad.  Mac, K2GKK, didn't get on the air until
after 6:00 PM. We ran 3F from the Salvation Army Citadel. I'm not sure what
the final count was. I collected all of the N3FJP logs and passed them to my
son (NE5SD for Steve Duskin) who was the FC coordinator. We worked every
state except Nevada. We, the Oklahoma City Auto Patch Association (OCAPA),
have not had a serious field day operation in probably six years. It must be
the old age catching up. 

Don't know if you heard about Loyd Hargrove, AB5I. Loyd died a couple of
weeks ago from complications resulting for an organ transplant. Loyd was
only 64. He was very active and supported OCAPA. He maintained all of our
club repeaters for the last 19 years or so, and was always there for field
day. Great CW operator.

My son has been licensed for almost a year. He and his wife took our
Technician Class License classes and both passed. Both Steve and his wife
took the General Class test and passed it the following month and a month
after that he took and passed the Extra Class license test.

Ham Holiday is going well. I did all of the prizes again this year. We even
had a couple of nice ones donated. We are currently a little over $7000 in
prizes to be given away. This will be our second year with a banquet. Kay
Craigie, N3KN, ARRL President, will be the banquet speaker.

A group of us went to Dayton again this year. Those in my car left Dayton on
Sunday and we drove to Pennsylvania to get a private tour of Tim Duffy's
multi-multi contest station, K3LR. The pictures on the web don't do his
setup justice.

I am up to 320 confirmed (current) DXCC entities. New ones for me are
becoming very hard to get.

Best wishes to everyone. If you should get back this way be sure and stop.

73, Dave (NE5S)

-----Original Message-----
From: okdxa-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:okdxa-bounces at mailman.qth.net]
On Behalf Of N5PA
Sent: Monday, June 25, 2012 10:09 AM
To: Discussion of OKDXA
Subject: [OKDXA] Field Day

Dave:

I had to go over to our farm in Franklin County, Mississippi and do some
work on the house over there.  On the way back I stopped for a few hours in
Brookhaven, MS and ran CW for them for a while and had a good time.  They
were not really interesting in racking up a big score, just having a good
time and exposing outside people to ham radio, which they did a lot of.
There were a lot of elected officials, police officers, and the general
public that kept a steady stream of people coming into the facility that we
were operating in.  They had a test session at noon and several new
licensees and several upgrades came out of the session.  They had a couple
of Windom antennas strung up in the top of the Pine Trees at about 100 feet,
one pointing east and the other west.  They worked very well considering how
bad band conditions were.  They had a TS-570S on the CW station, but the rig
was not interfaced with the software so I had to use some unfamiliar Iambic
Paddles to operate with.  They must have had an eighth of an inch separation
between the contacts and I finally got them down to my liking and took off.
I worked for a couple of hours and had a good time.  A thunderstorm came up
just in our localized area and we had to get off the air for a while and I
decided to head home, another hour and twenty minutes away.  I do not
remember working anybody from Oklahoma, but I worked a lot of Kansas,
Nebraska, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Minnesota.
I worked a lot of the east coast from Florida to Maine, but I was on 20
meters the whole time and never worked anybody close in.  This was a general
interest club and there were not any contesters in the bunch, they were
there to have a good time and introduce the public to ham radio, which they
did a great job of.  There were a steady stream of visitors coming through
the whole time I was there.  I had fun, they had fun, and that is what it is
all about.  No need taking FD seriously when you are working with a general
interest radio club.  I hope you guys had a good time working FD!

73,

Alan Clark, N5PA

Ellisville, MS

Email:   <mailto:n5pa at n5pa.com> n5pa at n5pa.com 

URL:      <http://www.n5pa.com/> http://www.n5pa.com 

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