| Fletch Seagroves, N1MEO
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| Fletch Seagroves, N1MEO
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Well, another successful field day under our belt. Not as rain free as last year, but still a pleasant weekend. Unless you were one of the ones who ended up stuck in the mud bogs. Thanks again to Buzz, KA1OMJ for use of his property. We shall miss it.
You can tell that Cycle 23 is on it’s way. The lower bands had poor performance; 160 meters was practically dead, while 80 and 75 meters were well below last year. On the other hand, the higher frequencies were booming! We have new club records for Phone stations on 20, 15, 10, 6, and 2 meters, 440 MHz, and Novice, giving us a new high QSO count for phone. On CW new club records were set on 15 and 10 meters, and satellite. And these were not just minor records. Ten meter phone had over 50% more QSO’s. Novice more than doubled its previous high count. Six meter phone had two and a half times as many contacts, even working South Texas. And 10 meter CW more than quadrupled its previous high score of 83 Q’s. All in all, 10 meter contacts accounted for over 20 percent of the total 8,744 QSO’s made by N1FD.
For a station by station list of the QSO counts, see page 6. Things are looking good for taking first place an unprecedented fourth year in a row. This year’s score of 26,274 is 19% higher than last year’s.
Saturday afternoon was an auspicious occasion from a historic standpoint. The daughter and grandson of Guglielmo Marconi, the father of radio, visited the site. Princess Elettra Giovanelli Marconi and her son, Prince Guglielmo Giovanelli Marconi, were accompanied by Giovanni Pelagalli, the founder and curator of the “Mille voce… mille suoni” (A thousand voices, a thousand sounds) museum in Bologna, Italy. The princess and prince were in the United States participating in the grand opening of the Marconi Museum in Bedford, NH. They were accompanied by Ray Minichiello, W1BC, the founder and curator of the Bedford museum.
Don’t forget to check out the club’s 1998 field day pages for lots of photographs of all the fun. Maureen Heedles took another lovely sunset photo of tower 3. Maybe we’ll make another QST cover.
Don, W1GUU, lost out on the longest commute to field day award. Don, W9WW (formerly KA1T) made the trip in from Wisconsin. Gene, K1NR, was up again and was instrumental, along with Nels, K1UR, and Linda, N1ZBS in setting new records on 2m and 400 MHz phone.
As always, there is some lost or found equipment. If you have either lost or found equipment, please let me know. I’ll try to be the clearinghouse to make sure it gets back to the appropriate owner.
On the not so great side, we did have two potential safety problems during teardown. Both instances can be traced to either tired workers or insufficient ground crew. Fortunately, no one was hurt, but that was only due to luck, not planning. We have to remember at all times that safety comes first.
This will be the last field day we have at Buzz’s place. We are going to need a new location for next year. Start thinking now, Field Day 1999 is only 10 months from now. 73, and see you at next year’s Planning meetings!