06/30/2006 | W9LJ The Lake County ARC and Lake County RACES once again held Field Day at the Lake County Government Center Annex in Crown Point, IN using the Lake County Department of Homeland Security's Communication Trailer. Last year we played around with a couple of antennas fed with the SGC Smarttuners and had many contacts, resulting in a good score. This encouraged many club members to get involved and put some effort into a class 2A operation. The planning for this years field day started, last fall. We were plagued with problems concerning the antenna for our phone station (a TA-33 on a 40ft tower) along with the GOTA station having transmitter problems. We ended up having to abandon the TA-33 and make due with other antennas. Even though, these antennas were to be used for other bands, then ended up working great on all the bands that we operated on. The CW station primarily used the 160M and 80M off center fed dipoles at about 60ft for all bands and the phone station ended up using a wire antenna up in the air with a car dealership advertising balloon and a SGC tuner at the bottom. The ballon had a great signal on 40 and 80M. We had to refill the 60" ballon about 3 times during the event. We had some good contacts on 2M SSB with WI, IA, IL, IN, MI, and OH. Even though, we were plagued with problems for the first several hours, by the end, we ended up doubling our previous score for last year. Planning has already begun for next year.

Those that participated:
K9MQ, WA8FIB, NA9U, WN9Z, K9WWT, W9WY, W9PEP, KC9HMZ, WB9VRG, KB9NSD, KB9HO, KQ7E, WA8ZAZ, W8GFG, AB9GV, KB9THY, W9ZRO, KC9HVF, KE9TC, W9YGH, KB9ORH, WV9O, and WD9GQO.

Special thanks to SGC for making such a wonderful and versatile product and to Rick, WN9Z. -- K9MQ