"I just flew in from Field Day, and boy are my arms tired..."
OK, its a stale joke, but as I sit here at the keyboard with a cup of coffee, I really am tired. I was up until 4a.m. last night/this morning after spending about 1/2 an hour at the RARS Field Day GOTA station, and 4 hours at the 40M phone transmitter... 2 hours logging, and 2 as the operator.
Admittedly, I came well provisioned for my stay at field day. I had a small ice chest full of caffeine filled soda, and a thermos filled with hot coffee. I had also stopped by the Donut shop to get two dozen assorted donuts to share with the folks at Field Day. OK, I think I may have gobbled down as many as a quarter of these, before, during, and after my stay, but its the thought, right?
I arrived back at the Carrol farm at about 9:45p.m., and quickly made
my way down to the GOTA station. Surprisingly, it was still busy at 10
at night. It took a while before I could sit down as a logger, but I
stayed in that position through two operators, about 30 minutes total.
Then it was time to walk back up the hill to the 40M phone station and pour a cup of coffee.
For those of you who haven't participated in a Field Day event,
especially those who haven't worked with SSB radio of any kind, signals
heard on amateur radio are not like those on your car radio. There is
generally lots of background noise, and sometimes the voices you here
are difficult to make out. It. took me a couple of hours (between the
GOTA station and logging at 40M station) before I was picking things up
as well as the operator I was working with. This doesn't mean that I
always copied everything... but I was getting most of the stuff he got,
and some he didn't. Of course, when we missed things, the operator
would have to ask for a repeat until we had it all. As I got this information, I would enter it into the computer.
At 1a.m. it was time for me to pour another cup of coffee and switch over to the operator station. By this time, I was fairly comfortable logging, but let me tell you... being the operator is a whole lot more complicated. Not only do you have to try catching the call sign and report of the contacts as the logger does, but you also have to: (1) record the contact on paper, (2) send out your station's report (using foot pedal to key the mike), (3) request repeats on information you and your logger may have missed, (4) repeat any of your information that your contact may have missed. Doesn't seem like that much as I type it now, but when it's all happening at once its easy to get confused. I didn't start getting comfortable operating until about 2:30a.m., and I only managed that by ditching writing the contact info on paper.
Will I do it again next year? Oh yeah. But next year, I'll be better prepared, and a little more experienced.
Man am I tired...
Mike Murphy (WA4BPJ) uses a king sized slingshot to launch a line into the trees to set up one of the 40M voice antennas. I worked with Mike during one of my shifts on Saturday night.
