08/03/2009 | W9LJ Field Day 2009 was the best ever in a series of upward scores and involvement for the Lake County ARC of N/W Indiana under the calls of W9LJ (main stations) and W9EMA (GOTA station). Our location was on the grounds of the EMA building in Crown Point, IN. Two communications trailers were used this year. One to house the CW station in Big Blue, and this year was our first year using the new state of the art District 1 communications van complete with air conditioning and satellite TV, housing the phone and ham satellite stations. All stations were manned and kept on the air for the entire 24 hours.

This year was a first for the antenna team using pneumatic tennis ball launchers to get our G5RV antennas much higher in the trees. The system worked very well and within two hours we had both the CW and GOTA antennas up, phone station then put up the Alpha Delta using the tennis ball launcher system and we were ready to go.

A tradition at the W9LJ site for the last 3 years has been to launch a helium filled balloon trailing 100 feet of stealth wire as a vertical for the CW station. The antenna puts out a killer signal but due to high winds or storms is not always available for the 24-hour operation. We then switch to the back up G5RV in vertical down times.

This year the GOTA station did extremely well with 187 contacts. We achieved the maximum amount of youth contacts with our youngest operator being only 7 years old. The GOTA station achieved one of it main purposes this year in rekindling an interest in ham radio to a ham that has been off the air for a number of years due to being busy raising a family. As a result of his involvement in Field Day, Joe Markovich KB9OI has fixed his Kenwood TS 520 and is putting up a vertical to get back on the air. He has also installed a new VHF/UHF radio in his truck to keep in touch with local hams again. Congratulations Joe and welcome back!

We completed all the possible bonus point activities thanks to a dedicated team effort on the part of many club members. We had a fast setup and a faster teardown due to a great effort on the part of the team. Taking down a tent in the wind is a real interesting chore. It was the best Field Day for W9LJ in many years and many are already planning on attending next years event. See you in the pile-ups. 73, George K9WWT -- K9WWT