06/30/2008 | AJ5Q Howdy,

AJ5Q 3A OK was up and running at 1305 CST (1805 UTC) in Altus, OK at the Hoyt Shadid Park near the City Resv. We had two radio's that had Vert Ants, and one that was set up with a long wire, all on 12vdc Batt power, with Solar recharging as needed. WX was hot, cloudy, occassional rain, near by lightning.

Signals on 40m, 20m was rather good, we did run into some problems with equipment. We did not have as many contacts as we wanted to get as we tried to grab them, but this is when we started to find out that we had our problems crop up. We sure had great ears, but the just seemed we could not speak well, so we tried to find out what the problems were. After finding the gremlins and kicking them out, we pinned down a few QSO's at times, then problem gremlins crept up again.

We had about 8 hams show up total, with some visitors as they strolled thru the park stopped by and ask some questions, at least this was a highlight to show them what the gear was all about. Even though we had a streak of bad luck, this is what makes FD fun when folks come up and see what you are doing, at least this time as we was talking, we made the several contacts at that time which made the club look good as we was hitting the East Coast area. Also a new ham had made their first contacts during FD 08, that was worth making it happen for the time being. The second set of problems set in later in the afternoon to end the day for us. We had to go QRT about 1700 CST (2200 UTC).

Well, may we have better luck next year... at least a good lunch saved the day from total loss.

Ron -- KD5CYW