Hey gang,

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We had a great lunch and brainstorming session at Hemmingway’s today to get everyone’s mind churning over options for Field Day 2004!? We talked about lots of different options and, while (as usual) we had more than one conversation going on so I didn’t catch it all, here’s my best recollection of where we’re headed.

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• We enjoyed meeting with several folks from the Paulding ARC (PARC) and shared with them what we think makes us tick:? we’d like to continue using N4N, we’d like to continue operating in the 150W category, and we have successfully avoided having anyone “in charge” or giving orders. ?Decisions are made by consensus and where there are different opinions we try to find some solution that everyone can live with.? Beyond that, most everything is “negotiable”.? The PARC folks will need to get back with their club members to see how linked up with us they want to be—maybe one operation with both groups participating, maybe two separate operations that share some expertise and operators.? We’ll welcome any of those who want to roll up their sleeves at N4N.? (Could be an additional 10-15 people, including some much-needed CW help)

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• Robin indicated that perhaps 6 or so folks from Atlanta Radio Club (ARC) might be interested in joining us for Field Day.

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• We plan to return to the same site. ?Other alternate sites folks have used in the past are a bit small for the operation we are planning.

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• The prevailing sentiment is to plan equipment and facilities around an operation a bit larger than last years—probably 8A or 9A—and shoot for top 5 nationwide.? We can use the same setup on phone of 4 stations:? 20m, 40m, 10/80m, and 15/160m.? We can also have the same single-station setup for digital, but not plan on sharing that station with CW.? The CW effort will grow to 4 stations (same band arrangement as phone) if we get enough CW operators (around 10 total), or 3 stations if we are short on operators (20m, 40m, and 10/15/80m). ?We’ll shoot for something like 4500 QSOs, and if the propagation gods help out on 10 and 15, we should easily be able to meet that.

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• To pull this off, we will need more folks than the 15 or so full-timers and 10 part-timers we had last year.? We’ll need something like 25-30 full-timers or the equivalent in additional part-timers.? We had a few folks with last minute conflicts last year that may be able to participate, and maybe some of the part-timers can be available for setup and teardown, and that will help. ?But in the end, we need a few more folks.? If we get 6 from ARC and 10 from PARC, that would do it.? Then we would just need to fill in a few specific needs—especially CW ops—by a bit of recruiting elsewhere (like SECC, SEDXC, etc.).? This looks very doable!

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• We have additional beams available this year and should have most everything we need—monobanders for 20, 15, 10, and 6 phone; tribanders for 20 CW, GOTA, and digital; and a dual band for 10/15 CW.? We hope to find a screaming good deal on a 40m yagi for phone, and use the wire moxon for CW.? If we get the GAP verticals working we can phase them on 80 phone, with wire dipoles for 80 and 160 as well.?? So we’re in pretty good shape on antennas.

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• We have plenty of radios available, but the challenge now will be to get the “right” radios on the ‘”right” band and mode. ?We need to pay particular attention to getting some radios with good narrow filters for the CW stations—we have a Kenwood TS-850 from Tim WK4U and a TS-570 from WA2MBP that will be great additions to last years’ lineup.? We’ll be looking for a couple more.

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• We’ll have to open up another operating position to handle the additional stations. ?I have a 12x20 screen tent that should work well.? We’ll have to work out a more detailed plan later to get each station reasonably close to 颈迟’蝉 antenna.? As a start, we can plan on putting the new tent where Mike Lee’s RV was last year and work 3 station from there.

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• PARC folks can help us out a lot with PR, visiting dignitaries, etc, so we may want to plan to have some demos, handouts, etc for visitors. ?This would fill in that last “missing piece” to fully gather the benefit of Field Day.

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Well, that’s about all I can recall for now. ?More to follow as I remember more, or get reminded of more important things I left out.? Looking forward to a great FD 2004!

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Think FD!

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Dave KE4UW

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