SMCARA members,
At the time of writing, Field Day 2018 is in our rear view window. Sunday mid-day the antennas were disassembled, station gear loaded into totes, chairs put away, and as the last vehicle, I looked into the vacant empty tent from my vehicles rear view mirror that bustled with activity just hours before.
I recalled the qso’s were flowing in one-by-one, voices filled the air with reporting class to the other stations, The sun shone brightly and the damp heat was building. All the makings of a great field day exercise were present.
I consider it a great honor that I was able to spend this Field Day exercise with my fellow members of SMCARA. While I may not have planned for all the failures which occurred, (or necessarily had a backup plan for either), we finished the exercise of proficiency with a greater scoring more than doubling the effort from 2017.
I must say that all of you are a great group to be with, and I wouldn’t have wanted to spend it with anyone else. If I was able to enhance or influence just one of you with a “takeaway” from field day, then I achieved what I set out to do.
Personally, I’d like to thank: Tom Clarke- W4OKW – You are a great planning and logistical coordinator, (lets do it again next year) Gene N3NO – A networking KING, (I now get it-and understand it), June- KC3GYL – the geedunk coordinator ( I gained a couple pounds off this weekend), Jason- N3YUG- You spent a lot of time with that new young ham who stopped by . He will remember that for his lifetime (and
it was noticed), and there are many others throughout the club which assisted with the setup and teardown of our FD site. Thank you to everyone for a successful event. I had a blast, enjoyed it and am looking forward to the next one already.
I’ve begun deconstructing the log and package for submission to the ARRL. When I get it complete, I will have my partner, Tom, check over it before we submit it to the ARRL for our entry. I think we did great and achieved what we set out to do as a club.
I’ve also started a “lessons learned” document. While items are fresh in my mind, I am making notes of things that failed, backups needed, fixes or even just better suggestions of what we can improve on as a club overall. If there is anything you would like to add to this list, as a suggestions, afterthought, or replacement thereof, please email it to me at barrettac@md.metrocast.net and I will add it in.
I hope to have an overview presentation available at the next club meeting on how we broke out.
My last thought in closing is: Sunday afternoons cold shower had never felt so good!
73’s,
Tony, N5TB