The infamous Buena Suerta ARS had a great 2010 Field Day. Last year we operated from the Pueblo Community Pavilion but it was not available this year. The Battle Creek Gun Club, taking advantage of the recent rains, was conducting their First Annual BBQ and Mosquito Shoot at the pavilion. They offered to share the location but we chose to look for a quieter site. Bubba down at Bubba’s Bait Shop and BBQ bailed us out again by offering us his crappie house on Lake Putnam. We readily accepted. Bubba’s crappie house is equipped with lights, a refreshment storage area, and a great lake breeze. What more could we ask? It was tricky installing our antenna. Bubba wasn’t very happy when we cut a hole in his tin roof for our pushup pole but he finally came around after we explained that the new vent hole would also prevent the BBQ smoke from collecting under the roof. A trip or two to the refreshment storage area also helped his attitude. Once we got our antenna erected, it was time to work the world. In fact, conditions to the world were so good that we had a hard time finding a clear frequency. Bubba’s Uncle Buford offered to show us how he cleared frequencies in his HF days. Buford took the microphone, whipped out a harmonica, blasted out a few bars of Fox Chase, let out a couple of hog calls and then began making turkey sounds that would make the operators of K4 Big Fat Turkey bow their heads in shame. Instant silence. 14.267 had never been so quiet. Buford reached for his can of refreshment and began calling CQ FD. Instant bedlam. Apparently the cacophony of calls overwhelmed old Buford because he arose from the chair, muttered something about the fish biting, and he and Old Shep headed back to the bait house. Darrel, one of our new members, grabbed the microphone and began racking up contacts. FIELD DAY 2010 was on. After about an hour, Darrel’s other brother Darrel pointed out that maybe we should fire up the computer and log our contacts. Oops! We forgot the computer. Bubba again rescued us.  He offered his back-up VIC-20. It saved us a trip back into town but we were unable to get our logging program to run on Bubba’s computer. We later discovered that we needed TR-Basic rather then TR-Dos. Darrell decided to just type in the calls and sort the data out later.  It worked great and as our contact rate began to approach 4 per hour, he could easily glance at the screen for duplicate contacts. Computer logging is the way to go.

Action slowed considerable Saturday evening because most of our team hitchhiked back to Pueblo for the Gun Club’s BBQ. You can always work stations on 20 meters but barbequed cabrito is hard to find. We left a skeleton crew to operate while we chowed down on cabrito, promising to return with a supply of bbq. While we were gone, our skeleton crew (Darrell) realized that supplies were running low in the refreshment storage area and it needed restocking.  Beth’s Place closes at midnight, so Darrel shut down the station and headed to Putnam for additional supplies.  Did you know that a VIC-20 does NOT have a hard drive? Ouch!!! Big setback.  Not sure where the log went. We didn’t spend much time fretting over the lost logs because that was about the same time that the other Darrell started catching crappie. You can always work stations on 20 meters but you can’t always catch a good mess of crappie. 

 Field Day 2010 summary

Several stations worked

Lots of crappie caught

Plenty of good fellowship

Sure was a good goat  

Make plans to join us for FD 2011 at Bubba’s Crappie House on beautiful Lake Putnam. FD at Bubba’s is BYOB. Bring Your Own Bait    

ARRL Field Day…where hams get serious about having fun. 

 BSeRS Field Day Coordinator