The Lenoir Amateur Radio Club and Caldwell County ARES groups operated Field Day 2013 from Redwood Park in Hudson NC.  We had 20 people participate in Field Day; doing anything from equipment set up, operating, food prep, to skunk control.  We operated as 2A with several different operators taking turns logging and making contacts.

Murphy started early for us.  The truck to be used for getting the grill and one of the stations had a break down on Friday.  This was going to be our hotel too( as though we would be sleeping).  One station's antenna had to be soldered back together on Saturday.  However, the stations went up fairly quickly.   The other Murphy related problem was getting our logging computers to work on a peer to peer network.  It was past starting time before we got that resolved, with occasional glitches  in communicating with each other.

Tom, KA4HKK purchased a telescoping mast from Max-Gain Systems specifically for FD.  This went up without any problems.  An inverted V G5RV was hoisted up the mast.  The time to set up this configuration was a lot quicker than getting a rope into the trees, I'm not a good shot with any antenna hanging contraption.

We were visited by the local newspaper (Lenoir News Topic) for interviews and picture taking.  It made the top fold of the front page of the Sunday edition.  An event for Field Day was posted on Facebook for all of our friends to come. 

Several of us bought FD apparel along with a pack of the Field Day posters.  The posters were tacked up around the county and at the sight.  By the way, we decided to have everyone who participated sign one of the posters for club archives.  We offered some of the posters as prizes for making certain types of contacts; one for the first one to make contact with W1AW, N3FJP, Hawaii, Alaska, and a DX station.  Unfortunately we didn't make contact with W1AW, N3FJP or Hawaii.

The solar predictions for FD changed daily it seemed like, but for our location we had plenty of good band conditions.

The FD locator website pointed a ham from another county to our sight.  He came early afternoon on Saturday and stayed all night!

Of course we had to have our regular cook-out with all the trimmings.

Special thanks to Ted KF4FLY, club president, and Tom KA4HKK for getting it all together.  And  James N4NIN and Susan N4OJN for getting the generator and the food there on time, and Barbara and Rachel for cooking and serving,

Our operators and set up people; Ro-k4hrm, Art-ki4kvy, David-n4dbr, Herman-n4hwk, Warren-wu3y, Phil-kg4bcc, Rachel, Barbara, Irv-w4iwk, Buck-n4pgw, his harmonic EV, Luke-ki4rbl, David-ki4kwt, Darrel, Scott-kc4swl, Will-wb4y, Ted-kf4fly, Tom-ka4hkk.