Field Day has come and gone and it was a great success. Well, considering the record breaking heat and the lousy band conditions. We had a total of 33 folks stop by the Palm Springs EOC. Most of them Hams and most of those took the opportunity to get on the air. Some came by to socialize and give support any way they could.
As promised, we operated 3 stations, one SSB and 2 digital. The digital stations mostly did PSK-31 with good success and with a few RTTY contacts thrown in. There was a guest appearance of Palm Springs Mayor Bob Moon, who was quite impressed by the operation and the capabilities of the city’s EOC. Also making an appearance was Desiree. You remember her from last year. At age 10, she had just gotten her Technician license. This year she showed up sporting her new General Class ticket ( there’s a nudge for some of you Technicians. )
The bands were pretty much in the dumps. The 40M digital station stayed busy most of the 24 hours. However the biggest complaint on everything else was “I can hear them, they just can’t hear me”. We also heard lots of “CQ Field Day” with few answers, so we were not alone.
Special thanks goes to The Joans. Joan KK6UVG and Joan K6QJU for handling the food for the weekend and a tip of the RATS cap to Earl KJ6DQR and his crew for getting the antennas up and down in the rather warm weather. And to anyone else that I forgot to mention that showed up early and stayed late to help out and to everyone that grabbed a mic or manned a keyboard. . Thanks for making it a great Field Day.
