SEKARC Big Brutus Field Day 2013

The SEKARC Field Day event was fun, hot, and educational for us newbies and overall a great experience that will be a big help in planning for Field Day 2014. Loren KDØRTX, and myself KDØSEG camped over the weekend and while we did not operate 24 hours straight it was fun! Like I mentioned before, our plan was to be laid back without the pressure of worrying about points or slamming in contacts. I made about 20 phone contacts and about 10 psk31 contacts. We used KDØSEG - 1B KS as our identifier.

Beautiful spot, plenty of strong country winds to go along with the heat so if you were in the shade you were ok. Pleasant evenings with the sound of a pack of coyotes having a good time under the glorious full moon and they were running pretty close to us at one point. It is amazing how different the night sounds are at night, away from the city.

Frank NØIGZ arrived bright and early on the 22nd and we set up his 6 meter beam antenna about 10 feet off the ground. He heard some early activity as clubs were setting up their Field Day equipment but sadly that was about it before his battery ran out before sunset. But I hope he still had a great time. Jack WDØCFH stopped by for a face to face QSO so it was nice to get a chance to meet a ham that was a friend of my Dad, Charles KAØEGE. Casey KDØFRL and his son stopped by as well as Larry NØMST and we all had a great visit and swapped some radio and truck stories. Joe WØMQY was there most of the day Saturday on QRP working mostly 40 meters and I know he had some success. The 20m vertical I made performed greatly. We set up Friday night, fired up the radio and my first contact was a psk31 QSO to Argentina using about 25 watts, the fishing pole with one 18 gauge speaker wire up and 4 radials on the ground! Total cost of my antenna, about $30. How sweet is that?

This will help us going in to planning for 2014, we can talk about it more at the meeting this Saturday 9am at Hardee's so come on by. Thanks for those that made it out and we are anxious to plan our next activity. Foxhunt? Mini Field Day? Maybe we can kick around an idea of setting something up during Little Balkins Days? Anyone have any thoughts? See you Saturday !

Here is a slide show from the weekend events !