01/08/2010 | W4EIP My company has a sales meeting and holiday party each year at this time. For the last few years, W4EIP (Arnie), WO4D (Orrin), KE4MMI (Johnny) and I have been just using this contest as an opportunity to get together and play Ham Radio a bit. This year was no exception, we got together on Friday and had some fun picking on and aggrevating each other. Propagation was lousy, but we managed to work several FCGers and few others around the state, plus a few outside the state. We did not have a lot of contacts, but we had a lot of fun with each Q and with each other!

We operated from WO4D's very well equipped station in Melbourne,FL. We used his FT1000D, QRO amp and the Mosley Classic 33 at 45'. Apparently and unfortunately we gave some minor QRM to the AD4ES group, but they got even with us with some of the same. We were actually only about 5 blocks apart both operating high power so I'm not surprised that this occurred. Anyhow they had it in the clear on Sunday for the SA opening, so guess they were happy then!

Actually the contest was secondary to our primary reason to get together and that was to recognize Arnie's 60 years of Amateur Radio. Arnie (previously W2DTJ) was licensed on Dec 10, 1949. I know that there are alot of folks that have been around in Amateur Radio that long or longer, in fact I worked several of the in SS this year. However, Arnie is special to me. He still has a great enthusiasm for "the hobby" and has many projects that he works on all the time. Sometimes it seems that he never gets finished with then, but he continues to work on them (I have plenty of these also). He is always encouraging and aggreviating when the rest of us need it. He is very patient with me and my constant babbling about Ham Radio. He has been a great source of motivation for me to improve on CW. It's not working on me, but maybe one of these days it will.

I am very proud to call Arnie a "friend" and hope that we can continue to enjoy our friendship and this wonderful Amateur Radio hobby of ours for many more years to come! Congratulations on 60 Years of Amateur Radio! -- KC4HW