07/09/2009 | WA0FYA It was a long drive from Philly to Washington MO for the Zero Beater's Field Day. A severe vibration occurred in the car which later turned out to be a 12 inch long piece of tread that separated from the tire. My son KB3OCF and myself were looking forward to another Field Day.

When we left Philly is was a pleasant 75 F, with low humidity. Arriving in Washington, the weather was hot and humid. Another typical St. Louis summer. We just didn't know how hot it would get.

The morning before the event we arrived early and got our antennas (80M full size loop, 80M dipole and TH6) in the air. The computer network was established and checked. We ran Scott N3FJP FD software and had no issues whatsoever - before or during the contest. At the 40M station, the contest keyer was tested and found not to key the rig! With 30 minutes to go this was the only thing remaining. Swapping ports; swapping USB cables; checking RS232 configurations, adding ferrite cores, panic was starting to set in as the voice keyer was stubborn and not keying the rig. With 5 minutes left to go, we decided to disconnect the microphone plug (8 pin on ICOM 756 Pro II) - and realized that it was upside down. Murphy strikes again. That fixed, we were on the air when FD started. We also had to resort to some unusual microphone stands.

It was hot. It was so very hot. During the day it got to 105F with 75% relative humidity. At night, it cooled off to 101F at 1:00 AM. Because we were operating in a brick building with no AC, you could feel the walls radiating heat. Because of the heat, you couldn't operate more than an hour before you had to take a break and drink something cool.

At around 1:30 AM, large thunderstorms rolled in causing us to disconnect. Unfortunately these storms lasted until 5:00 AM resulting in losing some of the most productive time on 40M.

Because of the heat and thunderstorms we achieved only half the points that we had hoped to get. But we were happy with the number of states worked, and the participation. -- KB0FHP