Field Day is known for its challenges. As promised, here are a few of my own recollections of FD, from humorous to disastrous, in no particular order.
* * * The Insects Many parts of the country have far worse problems with mosquitos, gnats and no-seeums than we do in coastal California. But my son and I unwittingly discovered where all of our own insects were hiding: under trees. On one especially hot FD weekend, the intense sun compelled us to find shade. We unfolded our chairs and table beneath a huge old oak, noting (as an aside) how our shoes were half-buried in soft brown leaves. Half an hour later we hastily backed out, our legs now covered with bites from ants, spiders, and who knows what else. The Wind One FD eve after the high bands had closed down I returned to my tent to nap. After a few minutes I was awoken by high winds. Worried about tree branches above, I left the tent, which I had neglected to stake down. The wind then picked up the tent and rolled it some hundred feet across a parking lot. It took three of us to recapture what had now become a billowing spinnaker and wrestle it back to the ground. Debut of the KX1 The first year I took a KX1 to FD, I drove to the top of 6000' Mt. Hamilton. I was operating at a picnic table, with a nearly invisible wire antenna deployed in a tree above, when two strangers showed up. They sat across the table from me, eyeing the radio. Now, the KX1 is about 3.5 x 1 x 6" -- pretty small for a transceiver. So after a few minutes one guy sets down his Coke and says with a drawl (I'm not making this up): "Where's the rig?" He thought it was a keyer. A few minutes later his companion asked, in all sincerity, "Where's the mic?" Code Speed Challenge When my son and a friend of his joined me at a club FD outing east of the Bay Area, they were excited about a new toy they'd brought -- a code-practice text generator. The unit had a speed control with a range of 5 to 70 WPM. They were both just starting to learn code and were thrilled to be copying some characters at 13 WPM. Then they got the idea of testing *me*. I said "set it to 30" and copied enough to prove I wasn't faking it. But they wanted to see how high I could go. So did I. I waited until I'd caught my limit of cold Coronas (2), knowing this would put me in The Zone, then had them start bumping the speed up in 5 WPM increments. With the other ops as witnesses I managed to copy 15 letters in a row at 65 WPM, surprising myself as much as anyone else. To this day, Corona is my beer of choice for Field Day. Yagi Burnout I participated in a club gathering outside San Jose for several years in a row that featured a portable three-element triband yagi at about 30 feet, a couple of 100 W rigs, an elaborate logging setup using networked laptops, and a frightening array of snacks that could raise your cholesterol levels whether or not you ate them. The ops had a good time but they weren't a competitive bunch, so that after several hours we'd logged maybe 50 QSOs. In the afternoon a carload of visitors showed up to ask what we were doing. They got the full tour. But since I'm really a QRP guy at heart, I backed away from the operating position, grabbed my KX2 and an AX1 whip, and took a few of them out to the parking lot. I attached the whip and a 13' counterpoise and started tuning around on 20 m. They were baffled. "Don't you need a big antenna, like that one?" someone asked, pointing at the yagi. "No," I said. They watched as I made first an SSB contact, then one on CW, then one on RTTY, using the KX2's keyer paddle and display. Mind you, I was standing the entire time, with just the rig, no computer or phone. Our highest QSOs-per minute rate for the weekend were those three on the KX2. The Flu Last year my son and I were determined to do FD on the high mesa above Point San Pedro, a spectacular spot accessed via a steep dirt trail at Devil's Slide. Problem, though: I started feeling sick on the drive there. After we parked I rallied a bit, so we started up the trail, though at about a tenth of my normal speed. Before we even got to the first ocean overlook, a wave of nausea hit me, so we found some hard soil, sans leaves or insects, where I could recline. I looked up at patches of sunlight through the waving branches of cedar trees and decided I wasn't going to skip FD just because of a little flu. So I had Griffin unpack my KH1, set it up, and hand it to me. This was the first time I'd logged while prone, something we'd anticipated by including detent in the KH1's log tray so it can't flop down. I managed a few QSOs, then we packed up. On the way back I had to stop three times, sitting on the trail with my head dipped, to keep from passing out. Needless to say, Griffin got to drive us back to Belmont. Much later he showed me a photo he'd snapped, surreptitiously, of me on the ground, battling the forces of Murphy's army. * * * 73, Wayne N6KR -- Elecraft, Inc. ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to [email protected]
