2006 ARRL Field Day
06/26/2006 |
W5ZDN
I made it out to W5ZDN (Heart Of Texas Amateur Radio Club) for Field Day, I haven't joined the club, but I think I will. They meet on the campus of Texas State Technical College and since I will be a student there I might aswell join the club and start going to meetings. The Field Day event was an event, like previous years I stayed the course all night. I took my camera, but I didn't get any photos as I seemed to have kept myself fairly busy doing other things from the time I got there till I left Sunday afternoon after helping take down the stations.
I pulled into the site roughly around 12:45PM CDT and as greeted by a good friend of mine also the trustee of a local school club. He introduced me to a few of the hams there that I had not met before, and then I got a chance to shake hands with a few locals I had not met before. I also got a chance to meet and operate with a guy around my age for awhile. During the duration of the event I spent time being social, in the afternoon and evening I was control op at the GOTA station. Saturday afternoon there was a VE session, and so those who were there, after they tested we showed them the GOTA station and they each got to get on the air (three of them, and they all passed, and will be getting callsigns soon). Also there were four kids that came from the houses behind our field day site, they saw the antennas and wanted to stop by. They each made a contact. The boy who is closer to my age (actually is a couple of years older) is a tech, and fairly new to radio, so he worked the GOTA station for a bit with my logging and being control op. We had a couple of guys stop by who weren't hams but interested and so they got on the GOTA station. Also some local politicians came out and operated the GOTA station. All in all the GOTA station was a great success (we operates W5TSA on the GOTA station for those who might have worked our GOTA station).
I also worked the two actual Field Day stations while I was there. I worked 20 meters for the early morning hours and then a bit of 40 and then 15 meters for awhile, too. We were working W5ZDN for those two stations. I had a lot of fun working the pile-ups on 20 all through the morning, I was amazed at making contacts before 8 O'Clock on 15 meters. It was a lot of fun and we did great.
I look forward to next year, though I may go out and operate with W5DXS (Heart Of Texas DX Society). They usually have a couple of stations running, we have talked briefly about putting a third on the air (my IC-718) and I think that might be nice. But it is too early to make my plans for Field Day for next year. We tried a pass Saturday night on AO-51, someone heard us but we didn't confirm a contact. We tried AO-27 in the morning but didn't hear anyone. So we didn't get that sat contact, but that was the first I had ever seen someone try to work the sats, and now I want a dual bander and a Arrrow antenna. -- KD5OWO
I pulled into the site roughly around 12:45PM CDT and as greeted by a good friend of mine also the trustee of a local school club. He introduced me to a few of the hams there that I had not met before, and then I got a chance to shake hands with a few locals I had not met before. I also got a chance to meet and operate with a guy around my age for awhile. During the duration of the event I spent time being social, in the afternoon and evening I was control op at the GOTA station. Saturday afternoon there was a VE session, and so those who were there, after they tested we showed them the GOTA station and they each got to get on the air (three of them, and they all passed, and will be getting callsigns soon). Also there were four kids that came from the houses behind our field day site, they saw the antennas and wanted to stop by. They each made a contact. The boy who is closer to my age (actually is a couple of years older) is a tech, and fairly new to radio, so he worked the GOTA station for a bit with my logging and being control op. We had a couple of guys stop by who weren't hams but interested and so they got on the GOTA station. Also some local politicians came out and operated the GOTA station. All in all the GOTA station was a great success (we operates W5TSA on the GOTA station for those who might have worked our GOTA station).
I also worked the two actual Field Day stations while I was there. I worked 20 meters for the early morning hours and then a bit of 40 and then 15 meters for awhile, too. We were working W5ZDN for those two stations. I had a lot of fun working the pile-ups on 20 all through the morning, I was amazed at making contacts before 8 O'Clock on 15 meters. It was a lot of fun and we did great.
I look forward to next year, though I may go out and operate with W5DXS (Heart Of Texas DX Society). They usually have a couple of stations running, we have talked briefly about putting a third on the air (my IC-718) and I think that might be nice. But it is too early to make my plans for Field Day for next year. We tried a pass Saturday night on AO-51, someone heard us but we didn't confirm a contact. We tried AO-27 in the morning but didn't hear anyone. So we didn't get that sat contact, but that was the first I had ever seen someone try to work the sats, and now I want a dual bander and a Arrrow antenna. -- KD5OWO
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