07/11/2009 | W8MOP 2009 FIELD DAY REPORT FROM THE W8MOP EAST RIVER AMATEUR RADIO CLUB, BLUEFIELD WV. didahdah dahdahdahdidit dahdah dahdahdah didahdahdit

Best things about this 2009 Field Day, in my opinion: first was N8GK, Gary Kadar's "SPUD GUN"...... second thing was the great weather......third: low bug count. Saturday started out at the Valley Restaurant in Green Valley, WV for breakfast and figuring out who was going to do what and when. Don Anderson WD8OOR, Ronnie Childress KD8HBO, Roger Stafancic KC8LGR and George "Hooger" Fisher III W4OF had met Thursday evening at Bob Frazier's WB8NRK home to pick up the feed lines, coffee pots, extension cords, tri-banders etc. so that part was out of the way. Don had picked up the 5 dipoles a day or so earlier in order to install the new 1:1 baluns that he had purchased for the Club. He had also gone to Ben Mills N8XXA home on Friday to pick up Ben's tower trailer. Ben had it cleaned up; the tires aired up and ready to go. THANKS AGAIN, BEN.... WE DO APPRECIATE USE OF THE TOWER! We met at Boy Scout Camp Roland in Bastian, Va. around 11am and began putting the tri-banders together, one for Gary Kadar N8GK for 15M (placed on Gary's push-up poles) and one for Roger for 20M (placed on the tower trailer). 15M propagation was fair to poor most of the time, 6M nonexistent, 40M and 20M were "great", 160M OK and 75M good once we got it up and running. There were 4 gasoline AC generators used during this event. Doug Ritchey WG8D, pilot, and Dave Mullins KD8LBZ, co-pilot, came to the Camp in Doug's surplus M32A2 Duece and a half 2 1/2 ton cargo truck. What a toy! Don showed up and we began to put up a 40M dipole for Randall Hash WB4BBF to use in CW mode, one for 75M phone and a 160M multi-bander for Don. The pneumatic PVC bullet/plug launcher ("Spud Gun") that Gary made is a real treat to use and made the job of running lines for the dipoles very easy. This unit would fire the 2" PVC bullet over the highest tree at Roland. It's hooked to a fishing reel that is mounted to the end of the 'gun'. The reservoir is pumped up to about 40 pounds, the bullet is inserted into the barrel and when the solenoid is engaged, the gun fires the bullet to just about any target one aims at with a loud sound that sounds like someone stepping on a very large goose. We did have stations on the air by 2pm (1800Z) as W8MOP 4A - VA and the last station (75M) went on the air around 8pm due to technical difficulties. The 75M GOTA station was run by Bill Sowers K8WBS since there were no takers to initially man the station. There was a nice potluck dinner at 6pm at the large shelter with 41 in attendance. Bob Frazier and his wife were there. We were glad to see Bob out enjoying himself. Tom Mallory N4AZJ made an appearance also. It was a good turnout and the food was absolutely great. Myself, Roger, Randall and his grandson, the Dave Lester N8VFR family, the Dale McCarty KD4IFD family, the Ken Kinzer KD8LJT family, Doug Hash KD4ARY and daughter spent the night at the Camp.

Contacts made: 15M Voice 55 20M Voice 120 40M CW 175 75M Voice 38 160M Voice 2 States NOT contacted: Alaska, Arkansas, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Wyoming DX: EA5OHT, Murcia Spain on 15M, DF2PY and DL5AWI, both Germany on 40M CW and several Maritime Mobile stations.

We radioed until around 240AM Sunday (only Matt Burns KC8CON stayed up that late), got up Sunday morning at 6AM and started making contacts again around 8AM or so. Our stations started shutting down around 10-10:30AM and we were leaving the premises by 1230; going by Bob's to store the equipment. A BIG THANKS to all that helped setup and take down all of the equipment for this year's Field Day exercise. Thanks also go out to Matt and Roger for copying the ARRL Field Day Bulletin for extra points and to Don Anderson for everything that he did in order to make this Field Day a success.

Randall Hash used an Acer mini notebook running N3FJP'S Field Day logging program http://www.n3fjp.com/ . It ran very smoothly and a nice feature was a map of the U.S. with every state highlighted that he had made contact with.

******************************** Check out a radio-active site at: http://www.erarc.com , The East River Amateur Radio Club. We'll be glad that you did! -- W4OF -- W4OF