06/28/2010 | W5UGD WOW! What a great Field Day! I have brag that my wife, Pamela Hoyt, W5RIT participated as she has in the past, which is a big deal, because she has my late father's callsign and I have my SK mother's callsign! That alone is enough to bring a tear to my eye, however, there's more! Our 17 year old daughter Megan and 15 year old son Brett also participated, and they did so as amateur radio operators for the first time ever! Both of them took their technician test and passed!!!! Megan is KJ4VUJ and Brett is KJ4VUI, which will soon change, as we have applied for vanity callsigns for both of them! Megan will be W5MGZ and Brett will be K4BRT! We operated from our QTH, using a cheap generator we bought a few years ago (under 200 dollars) and had a blast! We used a DX-CC antenna, which didn't let us down. For a change, we worked a couple stations via PSK31, and one via RTTY. One of our friends was running WT4F so we worked him on every band possible, except 160 and 23cm (Yes, we got him on 80, 40, 20, 15, 10, 6, 2, 1.25, 70cm, 33cm). As an added bonus, as if there wasn't enough already, Megan and Brett assembled a Rockmite 40 CW transceiver, *AND* it worked the first time we fired it up!!!! Our contacts topped my 2007's 140, 2008's 170 and 2009's 240... We made a whopping 261 contacts! 73 until next FD from the all ham family - W5UGD! -- W5UGD