06/28/2006 | W5AC W5AC, the Texas A&M ARC had a great time participating in this year's field day event. This year, we chose a location to keep us in the shade and away from bugs--The Texas A&M West Campus parking garage thanks to A&M Transportation Services. This 7 story garage allowed antennas to be located approximately 80' AGL. The control point was two floors down. All operations were conducted on emergency power from a generator.

Weather was very humid on Saturday with dewpoints around 70F. This makes for a lot of sweating, but very little cooling. Fortunately, the garage remained warm, but tolerable. Sunday brought lower dewpoints thanks to a back door "cold" front and highs were only in the mid 90s.

Antenna setup was comprised of a triband 10-15-20m beam, a 40/80m trap dipole, a G5RV, and a 6m Halo. The lights on top of the garage make excellent ways to string up wire antennas. A fishing rod with some rope can't be beat! Rigs included a TS-930S, FT-847, and TS-2000.

Logging this year was a accomplished with the very functional N1MM software. We used four laptop computers for logging networked via 802.11 HSMM.

Having the laptops also allowed the membership to experiment with the digital modes PSK31 and RTTY. As many of our members are no-code Technicians, the event provided the opportunity for many of them to experience HF which should encourage several of them to upgrade.

Several of the operators came back to College Station from being on their summer break as far away as the DFW area to participate in the event.

We all had plenty to eat and drink and this was probably highlighted Saturday evening with our all you can eat chicken tender dinner on-site. Plenty of Gatorate, water, and sweet iced tea from a local establishment kept all in good shape.

I think it is safe to say that everyone enjoyed themselves in the 24 hours we operated.

Operators/Helpers were:
KE5GED, KD5OUQ, KE5GHF, KE5GEE, KD5RYB, KD5NPM, KC7YRA, KD5SYI, KG5AI, and N5PYK -- N5PYK