07/20/2008 | WX4BWK This was the first FD for the Glynn Amateur Radio Group (GA) in many years. But did we have fun! We obtained permission to operate from the historical Old Coast Guard Station on St. Simons Island. It is now a maritime museum and has an 85 ft tower with ropes for flags. This made putting up two inverted vees relatively easy for 40 and 80 meters. The 40m antenna also worked great on 15m; and the 80m antenna loaded on 20m relatively well. We put two stations on the air in class 2F based on the Red Cross' approval to designate the CG Station as an EOC.

We decided as a group that we wanted to have fun, not be just a contest group. Several of our members had never operated in FD or any other event for that matter. So there was a big learning curve for many of them, i.e., learning to copy in heavy QRM, translating phonetics of another station to a call sign for the log, seeing what a dipole/inv vee really was, etc. We made 201 QSOs on SSB all bands, and 100 QSOs on 40m CW. The biggest problem was getting the other stations to confirm our call, WX4BWK. It was bad enough on SSB using the standard phonetics; it's a real mouth full. But it was even worse on CW. About 2/3 of the time the CW stations would respond to WX4B or WX4BW -- they simply didn't anticipate a 2x3 call with the WX4 prefix; or thought the final K was a "go ahead" signal.

Our tent was furnished by the local National Guard. We are indebted to their generosity, especially during the thunderstorm that went through the area on Saturday evening. It poured!! The equipment stayed dry!!

The biggest thrill was that many of our club members had never made HF QSOs before. So for them it was exciting to work so many states and Canadian provinces. We didn't concentrate on working distant stations, but we did work over 40 states and many of the provinces. Propagation was really good for us, especially in the 15m opening Sunday morning. We must have had a good signal, and after a few minutes calling others, we switched to calling CQ and ran off a string of 40 contacts in only a few minutes.

This FD event definitely has inspired the club to participate again. We have already begun planning for three stations next year. Also look for us in August 2008 for the International Lighthouse event from the historic St. Simons Island Lighthouse. Stringing an antenna from its 110 ft top should be a lot of fun, especially on 160m!

73, Jeff K8CQ, Glynn Amateur Radio Group, Brunswick, GA -- K8CQ