08/04/2008 | VE3II For the past several years, I had wanted to get together with my good friend Tom, VE3II, whom I met on Field Day some 30 years ago. Unfortunately, I was away from Toronto for graduate school and work. However, the opportunity arose where I could get up to the Toronto area and finally work Field Day with the Nortown Amateur Radio Club and my good friend, Tom. I was all ready to go. I had the blessing of my wife who encouraged me to make it a part of my vacation with my daughter, WA2DTO.

A few days before the contest, though, Tom calls me up with the news that the Nortown Club had to cancel their FD activities because they could not get enough commitments of time, people, and equipment. Tom asked if we should still take the time to get together and put in all the effort. My answer was, "If you're willing, I'm there." Tom was willing.

And so on the Saturday morning of the contest I rode up to Tom's from my father's (VE3LHS) QTH and had a wonderful reunion with Tom, an outstanding breakfast and then we pulled all the equipment, wired up the antenna and thought we were ready to go. That is when Murphy showed up.

The TS480 was mounted on the table and plugged in but it would go on only when we turned the P/S OFF! Huh? It was clearly a power supply problem (probably a shorted capacitor) but we were not willing to open it up and try to fix a power supply an hour before the contest. So we got a 70 amp supply from another piece of equipment and it worked perfectly, of course.

Next problem...the memory keyer. I had brought an MFJ memory keyer with me and, lo and behold, it did not have any sidetone audio output! No problem for operating since the rig had a sidetone but how the devil does one program the memories if you can't hear it? So, there we were, saying, out loud, dah di dah dit, dah dah di dah and so forth trying to time our self-generated audio speed to the keyer input. After about 20 minutes, we finally managed to input the memories and we were ready to go.

Then we realized that we did not have a ground rod. Hmmmm. What to do? We found a 3 foot piece of aluminum tubing, rigged up a small bracket for it to put on the ground wire and hammered that sucker into the ground. We were in business.

We operated 40 CW exclusively and had a wonderful time operating 1B. The band was pretty good and since Tom and I are good CW ops, we managed to pull off 711 QSOs with a break at 2:30-5:00 am for some sleep. The WX was perfect, the shack - a brand new garage - was well ventilated and spacious and the food was wonderful (the fried fish and chips made by VE3I's XYL, Lenore, was definitely a highlite of the cuisine aspect of the weekend.)

When FD ended, it was a simple case of dismantaling everything, putting it in the big plastic box for next year and then doing it all over again. I am sure we will have the P/S fixed, make sure the memory keyer has a sidetone and get a copper groundrod. Other than that, it was a wonderful weekend and I came back to New Jersey satisfied with our effort. -- VE3IFS/W2