Just outside the door of the Emergency Operations Center at Long Island, New York's Babylon Town Hall is a beautiful park with a lake. A perfect place for a Field Day operation. The Great South Bay Amateur Radio Club (W2GSB) is really blessed by having this perfect venue for Field Day. Since 1975 the club has taken advantage of our great location which gives us the opportunity to show off Amateur Radio to the public and enjoy a nice time. Due to the fact that we are right next to the town's Emergency Operations Center, we operated 5F. We also ran a GOTA, VHF, Satellite and QRP/Solar Power stations. The CW, Digital, VHF and Solar powered stations were set up in our club trailer on the south side of the park. The SSB stations were set up in a portable carport tent on the North side to minimize interaction between the stations. Everything with the exception of the Solar, Satellite and GOTA stations were fed from a single gasoline powered generator. The GOTA station (W2TOB) resided in its own tent with a separate antenna and generator and logged with N1MM logging software. We used a portable hand held 5 watt radio and an Arrow antenna for the satellite station. We logged with a hard wire network using N3FJP's Field Day logging software. Lots of CAT-5 and CAT-6 cabling around the park.

We had many visitors and even signed up some new hams and several people signed up for the free licensing classes that we run. Several local New York State and local officials and politicians came down to see us in operation. The Red Cross had two licensed representatives. One visitor commented that our club was more like a family because of the way everyone interacted with one another. We do pride ourselves as being “the friendly club”. We are not only hams, club members, but friends.

A nice surprise was a visit from fellow club member, John Amodeo NN6JA who flew in from California to join us on Field Day. John is the producer of the ABC TV show “Last Man Standing” with Tim Allen.

John must have brought the Southern California weather with him because both days were absolutely beautiful. We had visits from our ARRL NLI Section Manager and club member Mike Lisenco N2YBB and ARRL Hudson Division Director Joyce Birmingham KA2ANF.

The local Cablevision News12 Long Island came down to interview us and did a very nice feature piece on Sunday which ran on that channel several times during the Evening and early morning hours.

Every year we say that this one had been the best Field Day for us, but this one topped them all. Thanks to all who had worked W2GSB and W2TOB this year.

 More information on GSBARC http://www.gsbarc.org