?
Had another fun Field
Day weekend!? A lot of
things went really well¡ªspecial thanks to Eddie for
all his work getting the software and radios playing
nicely together.? He also got my new IC9700 set up
with satpc32 and
the azi-ele rotor so making a satellite contact was so
simple even a computer
dolt could do it, bleary
eyed a bit
fuzzy headed, alone, at 1:30 am.? ??
Also
thanks to Joe AJ2Y and Eric W4MC for
helping
me
work through several
failed
attempts at sending message traffic.? Finally got that
figured
out and working
reliably
(using
HF rather than 2m packet) this
past Wednesday.? Thanks
too to Jeff1 for setting up his raspberry pi widget to
constantly rotate among
screens showing pie charts of qsos by mode or
operator, map that filled in USA/Canada sections as we
worked them, and charts of qsos by band, mode,
operator, etc.? It was fun to watch¡ªespecially
on
Sunday.?
As
an example of the
difference a bit of luck can make:?? Anyone remember a
fire drill getting
the generator going again when it ran out of gas
leaving all 4/5/6 stations dead in the water?? C¡¯mon,
you
know it
happened.? More than once.? Well this year the
generator got filled periodically, so we never ran out
of gas . . . until about 5 minutes past two Sunday
afternoon.? Some days you win, some days
you lose.? This year we won.?
We also learned that the generator can run from 7:00am
until 2:05pm on one tank of gas.?
While
we didn¡¯t have to work around thunderstorms as we
often have in the past, it certainly was toasty Friday
through Sunday.? Ceiling
fans, box fans, and the pool were put to good use
cooling us down.?
Things were going a bit
slow on Saturday as we (really Eddie) worked out a
fist full of quirks with stations that didn¡¯t want to
behave.? So by 10pm when things wound down for the
night we only had about 300 qsos.? Another 100 or so,
mostly CW, were
logged waiting for the satellite pass, so at 0200
there were 415 or so contacts.? We all got some sleep
and didn¡¯t
really re-engage until after breakfast, around 0900.?
Once we got fired up Sunday, we were rocking and
rolling, averaging better than 100 qsos an hour for
the last 5 hours.? Much mo betta.?
We made just under 1000
qsos on the main N4N stations, plus 24 GOTA contacts
from 7 or 8 visitors, and a half dozen satellite
contacts.? Qso
points should be around 3275 (compared to 2875 or so
last year).
Pursuit of bonus points
went remarkably well this year.? We got 400 points for
operating on emergency power, 100 points for alternate
power qsos, 100
points for copying the ARRL bulletin (got it on CW,
digital, and RTTY), 100 points for having a safety
officer and completing the safety checklist, and 100
points for Eddie¡¯s posts regarding N4N to Facebook.? Using Winlink Express and
VARA the message traffic was successfully sent via RF,
including one message to the SM, for another 200
points.? Gary
served as GOTA coach for more than 10 GOTA contacts
for another 100 points.? We also successfully made 8
satellite contacts, for qso points plus a 100 point
bonus.? We¡¯ll
get another 50 points for electronic log submission,
for a total of 1250 bonus points (compared to 750 last
year).
So . . . total score
should be around
4500, compared to 3600 last year.? All preliminary, of course,
but not too shabby!
And Jimmy!!!? Guess who
was the top CW op, again!!? ?
More to follow, but for
now I¡¯m hitting the sack.? Getting up early tomorrow
to get the wire antennas down and coax put away.?
Dave UW
