Field Day is gonna be FUN...

If you can't already tell I am excited again to participate in Field Day this year, this should serve as a gentle reminder.

Brad N1JIF and I drove down to Bennington tonite to attend the May SOVARC meeting. It has been a long time since I saw a lot of these guys and gals, and it was worth every penny. We had other chores to do before the meeting that actually brought us to Bennington, but it was really nice to see everyone again after a long time.

Kudos to Randy N1GWL for being the adhesive that brings these people together. He has served as President in the past, and personally, I think leadership falls naturally upon this guy. Except for the piss-weak coffee, he did a great job in the short amount of time available to update everyone and then throw the floor over to Chuck WA1NBU to cover the Field Day planning. Randy did bring along some cookies, so I guess that made up for the coffee. And no, Randy's last name is not Friehoffer...

Longtime friend and former Catamount Radio Club President (SOVARC predecessor) Jack Evans WA1DLA was present, along with his son Mark. It was great to say hi, I haven't seen Jack or Mark in years. Here is a shot of Jack and President Randy:
You can see the rest of the shots from the meeting HERE, as well as other radio related shots.
The link to the general Ham Radio galleries is HERE you can get there if you go to http://K1XH.SmugMug.com

Apparently the SOVARC squad will be operating 3A (three alpha victor tango) this year, even though I think there is enough gear to operate 4A, there may be only enough dedicated operators to run 3A. Oh well. I guess 2A is the most competitive class, and 3A is probably best suited for us, seeing how we will have a GOTA station as well.

Looking over the 2K9 Field Day summary sheet as supplied by Chuck it is apparent there is a bigass hole in the station setup. Where is 75M phone? Chuck! What were you thinking?

Personally (again with this personal opinion crap!) there should be a shift in the stations, KT1Q/N1GWL/K1XH should be 40-75 (phone only), the N1RZ/W1VY station should be 10-15-20. I have an old (last used during Field Day 1999) 75/80M dipole we could string as an inverted vee that would work great on 75, I think if we don't setup for it we will be missing literally hundreds of QSO's as well as a great chance to piss off all the AM'ers. I guess it is time to start measuring coax...

I wonder what it will take to get everyone out to operate? That is probably better left for another post, but I have to admit that it would be great to see Alan N1LSZ, Wayne KA1CXD, and some of the others that we have all had a blast with in the past at FD 2K9.

Of course it won't be the same without some of the Silent Keys, Chet, WAZ, Tony, Ken, Chris, Ron, Bob, Ray & Ed just to name a few. I know they will be listening from above...