06/30/2003 | K9USA Our Piatt County Ham Radio group (in Illinois) had an excellent turnout for FD2003, with two father-son sets of participants, including KA9VHQ and his recently-licensed 12-year-old son KC9DEL, and KA6A and his son K9AQQ. We set up 3 stations (20M, 40M, 80M) on the county court house lawn for visibility and public accessibility which drew 25 ham participants over the weekend. We're one of the least-populated counties in Illinois with about 80 licensed hams which made for better than 25% overall participation of hams county-wide in Field Day 2003. We also gave out custom-printed helium balloons (that promoted ham radio and our web site, www.hamradio.piatt.com) to kids during a local rodeo parade that took place on Saturday around the court house square. We enjoyed visits from our State Representative, our mayor, city council members, state's attorney, law enforcement, fire fighters, ambulance service, emergency response agencies and organizations, the county newspaper, and the general public. Our Saturday Night Supper was a great success with hams and their family members enjoying cameraderie and excellent food prepared by our local Mason lodge (7 of whom are hams). -- KD9E