07/26/2006 | WA3SH The mission of this field day was the brainchild off Randy, N3ZK and its mission was to do a simple, minimal field day where there were overnight accommodations (as WA3SH). Opposed to the larger scale effort put on by our club (N3SH) we had 4/5 operators and we learned where we had been lacking for this type of setup CW ops and antennas that alone made our job difficult to keep up with the other club effort.

We had plenty of food, a dozen visitors, including N0VLRs 2 sons, N3KFDs 2 daughters and a bunch of others. N0VLRs boys were so taken back by field day that they are now awaiting their tech licenses from the FCC. Also, N3KFDs daughter is studying for hers!

The weather was hot & dry but we were comfortable in a mess hall with several fans and 2 refrigerators! The small effort turned out to be 4A with most radios operating all the time. We also had a network running N3FJP FD software which is really stable.

We enjoyed having the park rangers come up and check things out (right about when we were cooking burgers.Hhhhmmm..) anyway, they seemed interested

We ended up with 650 contacts mostly phone contacts and a smattering of CW and digital.

We had fun and we learned what it was like to run a complete FD effort on our own check for pictures on www.n3zk.com. -- N3ZK