07/03/2008 | N7PR Bob, W6JCW, and I mainly wanted to just have fun in a wilderness area of the Tahoe National Forest in northern California in the Sierras during the Field Day weekend and play ham radio and also have some quality time with our dogs (Bobs dog is a great little German Shorthair pointer and mine is a young Siberian Husky). Its inspirational to watch these two dogs play and run free together in the forest (with Bob and I nearby in case a Mountain Lion shows up). Bobs dog did find a rattlesnake about 30 feet from our cabin but neither his dog nor the rattlesnake were harmed by the meeting and the rattlesnake sought refuge in one of our storage sheds. We all had a great time this weekend except possibly for the rattlesnake. Only negative was all the smoke at our QTH from the many still burning California forest fires even at our elevation of 5000 feet.

So how did the Field Day activities go???? Almost everything worked great this weekend (generators, batteries, solar panels, rigs etc except for late Saturday night when we had three rigs in a row die on 75M within an hour. (These were antique beloved Kenwood TS820S transceivers, goodies but oldies with lots of contest hours). Luckily we had enough replacement TS820Ss on hand as direct replacements and Murphy stopped after the third rig. Here are the rough results:

N7PR 2E SV
BAND QSOs
80M 139
40M 545
20M 591
15M 3
10M 0
6M 21
2M 5
TOTAL 1304

Again, we had a lot of fun and it was great (although stressful at times) to hear and work so many kids on the air during Field Day! At times we could hear their Moms and Dads actually coaching them in the background J. We tried our best to encourage the new hams and to make a special effort to make their QSOs with us enjoyable and reinforcing ones for their ham radio Field Day experience.

I hope you all had as much fun as we (and our dogs) did this Field Day. 73, Ted, K6XN and Bob, W6JCW -- K6XN