07/01/2010 | W4GR GARS moved to a new site after about 15 years. We were worried about antenna placement, parking, interstation interference, insects, rain, RV parking, folks finding us, and band condtions.

We had the largest turn out in recent years. I hate to give a number without actually seeing the logs, but I believe we'll report over 150. About 60 were members. About 35 were Gwinnett ARES members (a lot of overlap).

Although most of the trees were to one side of the pavilion, we managed well. There was one pull that held three 20 meter dipoles. SSB, PSK and CW. The run was well over 500 ft from end to end and ran across the parking lot. We operated all three modes and had less trouble than ever. On PSK, some signals were obviously blocked. But we worked all three. 10 had a beam at about 40 ft on military style poles. And 6 was up about 30ft on the same type poles. We also had a 20m vertical from hamstick with ground radials up about 25 ft for the PSK station. Don't really know which was better the dipole or the vertical. Seems they both served us well. 80, 40ssb, 40cw and 15ssb were dipoles in the trees behind the pavilion. Our satellite operation was on the patio. We used a lot of coax, but it worked.

The pavilion was new and setup in a V. The center was community area for antenna building, VE exams, and meals. The wings were for operating. On the large concrete patio, we set up a 10x20 tent for hospitality. The antenna build was for a j-pole or Moxon. There were about 20 folks watching, I don't know how many they built. The VE session tested 10. We had a D-STAR station setup mostly to show and answer questions.

Dreamland BBQ catered the Saturday evening meal. We bought for 70 and had very little left over. There was a short period around dinner time when there was some lightning, so we shut down and disconnected. But it passed!

The park folks were great about allowing us to stay overnight. We probably had 20 folks there at 2:00am. Some slept in chairs, some in the RVs. Bands that were open were operated all night.

Breakfast was Burritos.

Observations: We didn't call cq often enough, long enough. I missed having a GOTA station, but the points are slim and we still handed out several First Contact certificates by just letting them sit with an operator and operate. Actually scheduling operators has been tough. Having operators isn't a real problem, we just can't get a good schedule. This year we left it up to the band captains. In the past we've had web forms. We had plenty operators, just not a good schedule. Publicity was probably better than past years. We saw several hams from the area that I didn't recognize. There were several folks just wanting to know what it was about.

Thanks to all the GARS crew for making this a very successful and fun Field Day!!

Norm, WA4ZXV

-- WA4ZXV