06/25/2007 | W7V Field Day 2007 for the Elko Amateur Radio Club (W7LKO) was held at the Spring Creek marina. Spring Creek is located in Elko County which is a large part of northeastern Nevada. But before we go further we'd
like to thank Spring Creek for the use of the park grounds over the whole weekend.

Friday we began setting up antennas. First the beam was put together and up it went on the "Punkin's" 30 ft. mast. The "Punkin" is our portable light plant with a 25kw diesel generator donated to the club by Barrick Goldstrike mining company. The generator is a bit on the noisy side so we much prefer solar power. An educated guess is the ducks and geese living in the reservoir are also in agreement.

Sunlight is not in short supply here and we had 3 sets of solar panels putting out around 8 amps each to a bank of 3 - 100 amp/hr batteries for each operating position in our 2A plus GOTA setup.

Next up went the 2 verticals then everything was cabled together - ready to go.

This year we decided to try N3FJP's network logging program. In years past we've operated each position by "mode". One station on CW, the other on SSB and the GOTA able to use any mode and band. Using the network program, it was reasoned, either 2A station could operate any band, any mode and there would be no dupe problem. The program worked flawlessly but our ops gravitated to their favorite mode and one
station dominated CW while the other worked SSB.

Saturday was also another time for a first. We decided to combined a BBQ along with Field Day. The steaks were awesome and cooked to perfection. Everyone enjoyed the BBQ so much it's will become a regular part of Field Day activities.

By the end we had tallied at least 151 CW, 198 SSB and 98 GOTA QSOs. This year we managed to remember the ARRL Field Day message and grabbed a copy of it on CW from K6KPH on the 80 meter Sunday morning run.

Earlier in the year a Reno club issued us a challenge to see who'd be Top Field Day Gun. Unfortunately they folded. We weren't able to make sense of that because a big city club should be able to humiliate a
bunch of small town folks. Oh well maybe they'll find their courage next year, hi.

Forgot to have the ops put their "X" on a a sign-in sheet so the names will have to come from memory. We had Al KA7DGL, Jim K7IKN, Gerry KG7TD, Jack KE7HTY, Steve KC7YNS, Bill KD7CWA, Dave W7GK, Bruce NQ7P, Kent K6IN, Kathy W7BDY, Greg KE6FFN and Dave KE7ABK come by to either help setup, break down, operate or combination thereof.

Stan Zunino one of Elko County's elected officials came by to sign the visitor log along with Joe Giraudo, N7JEH, an official with the local Red Cross.

Thanks to Bill KD7CWA for the photos. -- W7GK