07/10/2004 | WA4UQC The 2004 TEARA Field Day activities were held in the beautiful settings of the Wendell Public Park. We had 12 operators and the opportunity to demonstrate amateur radio for several new folks from the community. We even had the Wendell Chief of Police's son on the air for his first contacts.

The wx was good for the most part, though we were unable to start setting up on Saturday morning due to rain that was moving out of the area (thankfully!). A COLD wind blew through during the night on Saturday, and made "bundling up" a necessity. We operated 80m through 10m Phone/CW, as well as packet radio on SEDAN and APRS.

The primary station operated under the club call sign of WA4UQC. We used dipole antennas for HF operations, launched up into the trees in the park by AC4UD and his fishing rod. The VHF operations were via a mobile mag-mount antenna stuck to a cooking grate from a charcoal grill, and a 2m coaxial dipole that was built 'on site'. The primary operations were powered by 4 deep cycle batteries, that ran us for the entire event without maintenance/charging!

The GOTA station operated under the CSC callsign 'W4EOT', as in W4 Emergency Operations Trailer....pretty neat!. The GOTA trailer is self-contained, so it went on the air quickly. It was powered by a 5kw portable generator, and was very 'miserly' with fuel usage. This is a heck of a portable communications station, built by Ronnie WA4MJF, Sherry KB4EXL, and CSC.

We all had a great time, and much was learned for next year's activities. It was a short weekend, and time seemed to pass quickly. As usual, we all had some good laughs, and began to discuss how we could do a better job with emergency communications. Check out our FD info and previous years' FD pictures at http://www.TEARA.org . -- WB4IUY