07/04/2008 | W5QGG 2008 Midland Amateur Radio Club FD
Beal Park

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times..
We watched the storm front in the east as it moved toward the FD site. It was easy to tell the storm had high winds and rain. Lightning was an added feature. The lightning required us to shutdown operations for an hour on Saturday afternoon. Everyone gathered in the kitchen for some educational training. The lightning moved off to the Southwest and the clouds, rain and cooler temperatures remained.

The powerful sprinkler system came on at 3AM and started rounds around the park. The rain soaked park became the swamp. About 5AM the sprinklers around the generator came on and a few minutes later FD was off line. Several generators were at the site on standby and several fast thinking club members quickly got the site back on line.

The highlight of FD is the fine grilled foods by Dwayne KD5VOU. Dwayne puts on a fine feed that is hard to beat. We had two visitors that drove a thousand miles to have some of Dwaynes fine cooking with us at FD.

N5VOHs Satellite station provided a noble battle to work through the birds.

The club setup for 3A this year. About 30 signed in. ATMOS Energy came through with a super nice Van equipped with an A/C unit and enough room for two stations.
Antennas included two 30 foot towers with tribanders. Three verticals rounded out the HF antenna lineup. The clubs FT990 failed about the same time the generator went off line and K5RS fetched his FT920 to finish out FD. Other rigs were KE5MBNs Icom 765 and W5AJs MarkV. The club used N1MM software to log and networked three laptops for the event. We posted 9,822 points for the weekend.

N5POB and WA5ZFH setup a solar powered six/two meter station. Six and two meter beams were installed on top of a push up pole and punched a hole in the ether. Several nice openings on six made the trip worthwhile. N5POB had internet at the site and it came in very handy for watching the weather.

Thanks to all that helped setup and tear down the stations and supplied equipment. It takes a LOT of work to have a good FD. This year we had a good FD, good food and good friends working the event.

Be sure to visit the clubs web page for pictures of 2008 Field Day.
http://www.w5qgg.org/gallery/fd2008 -- W5AJ