06/26/2002 | W0WOB This was the 3rd year to hold Trojan ARC's 2A KS effort at the Colby airport. We have a shaded awning, yet an open environment, and low electrical noise with some trees and lots of open tower space. New this year was a 70' crankup tower we used for 6m yagi and dipoles. This nearly solved mutual interference problems. The higher 6m antenna seemed like a boon, but with only 2 E clouds favoring us during FD we didn't get a chance at extensive evaluation.

The GOTA station went almost unused by our 'ham retirees', but it was appreciated by one visitor who enjoyed chasing Puerto Rico and working a couple other stations. Our most interesting ham ingenuity episode was the "brand new, 20 year-in-the-box" Alliance HD-73 rotator we got at Dayton. The dual speed rotation was only VERY SLOW. After a few rotations looking for 6m E clouds, the CCW rotation became as advertised, while the CW direction quit. Inspection of the control box innards revealed a highly corroded copper switch actuator -- cleaning it made the system perform as expected.

We had about 1150 QSOs and of course the usual great eyeball QSOs. Our ops and main interests: K0BJ - cw; WA0CAL - refreshments; K0FJ - logging and LAN; KC0HBR - graveyard; KC0IWH - cw; KC0JAO - all aspects; KB0LGX - graveyard; K0MXU - teardown; K0QP - SSB S&P; N0QE - SSB running; N0XJ - setup and repair; N0XNJ - logistics; N0XNO - setup

HIGH winds plagued setup day and all but 4 hours of Field Day. At least that kept the bugs at bay. CU next year. -- K0BJ