Field Day June 24, 2006

Participating in Field Day as a club for the third time time in LWRA history turned out to be as good as last years event, if not better. Good weather brought out thirty-five people this year to our event held at the Lake Wales Kiwanis Park. Our stay at the park went from 10AM to nearly 8PM. Lunch was served at noon and the contest began at 2PM. We had City officials and visitors attend- curious about Amateur Radio.

The picnic portion of the event consisted of 'Sloppy Joes' which has quickly become a favorite in recent outings, Hot dogs, Hamburgers, Sausage, along with plenty of side dishes, deserts such as Shirley's famous 'Cherries in the snow', and sodas to satisfy everyone all day long.

Kiwanis Park has turned out to be an excellent choice in location with plenty of covered table spaces, for food, hungry members, family, friends, and equipment.

At Lunch time and the start of the contest a temperature of 88 degrees was noted. Fortunately a continuous moderate breeze through the day made the temperature feel like 80, keeping us comfortable. Also the clouds building all day helped out temperature wise, but had us wondering if we were going to be rained out. We did get a couple of very light sprinkles that did not stick around for long as the day progressed. The temperature actually started dropping off around 3PM into the low 80's. It was not until we began wrapping things up at the end of the day did the nearly 2 inches of heavy rain come pouring down.

A few members brought Heathkit gear and a number of really old QST magazines, some selling for only a quarter back in the day, to be put on display for the public and to stir up some interesting conversations. I'd like to see more of this next year. And yes, we've got pictures!

This year our Field Day setup consisted of not two but three stations to operate the 15, 20, and 40 Meter bands this time. The transceivers used this time were an Icom IC-730 that seemed to have a fit part way through our event but was fixed, a Yaesu FT-757GX, and I modern Icom IC-756. For antennas, we used Sam W4KUM's tower and tri-band dipole made from just a single element of a tri-band beam which was used on 15 and 20 Meter bands. We ended up with two 40 Meter dipoles arriving on site and so both were deployed. One on CW and one on phone. A 4th antenna was brought by Chet AB4XK as a 15 Meter monoband dipole made of tubing. Above the dipole 'Old Glory' could be seen waving in the steady breeze through the day.

15 Meters turned out to be a flop as we only made 4 contacts through out the day. The band was indeed open but we only heard the same few stations. The ARRL Field Day guideline packet inspired us to give other bands a try besides 20 and 40 Meters but I guess the rest of the Country was not as enthused as we were?

This year we used our new club callsign K4LKW for the event and was found to be much easier to say using phonetics over our old call we used for the previous two years- KF4YEA.

We had 3 additional radio operators over last year making a total of 10 lined up and waiting to get behind one of the three transceivers, operating on 15, 20 and 40 Meter bands. You only got your turn at the controls when someone stepped away from a transceiver to get another plate of great food! With continued very poor propagation this year and pileup type conditions it was rough on the operators. We worked hard for each contact made. Having such a good time, we ended up staying nearly an hour longer (near dark) at the park than expected. The operators this year were:

Chet AB4XK Rich WA4ABM Glen KA2EUM Jack K4BYF Don WN3USA

Max W2IQE Sam W4KUM Howard WB4NYT John KC4KLM Rick W4RLD

This review is not over yet. As you have a look at the pictures taken during Field Day there are also insightful descriptions as to how the day went, and also comments from a number of members about the event as well.

Ithink that says it all about your great group of folks we are fortunate to have in the LWRA in just a few paragraphs. Again, thank you all who participated and contributed in many ways to make this a fun, laid back event.

Hope to see you at Field Day 2007!
John - KC4KLM