06/30/2003 | W The Kaw Valley Amateur Radio Club set up again at Lake Shawnee. Everything went pretty smoothly until we discovered that the roatator at the top of the tower didn't work! It was brought down and "fixed". But when the tower went vertical again, it quit. As a result we got a late start on the transmitting. It came down again and worked perfectly as long as the tower was horizontal! After being put back up again it worked sporadically - sometimes taking five minutes of finagling to make it turn. Certainly limited operating! Things went along fine until we received a call for the Amatuer Communicatins Van that we were using for our SSB station. It was an emergency call out! We never did get the van back that night. We moved everything outdoors (luckily the weather was nice) and continued operating. Around 2:00 AM a thuderstorm started moving in and we ceased operation. I took advantage to get some sleep. The rain continued for about 3 hours. About 5:30 or so, I was awakened by the sound of the tower and antennas being taken down. There was some serious weather west of us and it was decided better safe than sorry. We got everything down and put away. Of course it never rained after that. So we ended up with only about 12 hours of operating time. -- K