FIELD DAY 2004 SUMMARY

Bottom Line: A good time was had by all.

We set up on Friday in the area North of Ho'okipa (the wind surfing capital of the world). This area is usually occupied by cattle. We were all surprised to find that the grass was very high this year, although we could have anticipated it from the heavy rainfall  last winter. A good weed-wacker would have been useful.  The weather was great, the wind didn't get too strong, and we had only a few slight sprinkles. This is not always the case for this location and we have had some fierce winds and rain in the past 

For  the MARC members that were able to be there,  this was a long day.   We set up a rhombic antenna with 400 foot legs, each  leg being supported a guyed Tower.  This year we  set up only one station in a small bus that was loaned to us for  the event . We also set up a  linear in anticipation of poor propagation conditions. Actually, however,  we were surprised and pleased,  as was everyone else,  that reasonably good propagation did occur for the event.  

It was start time and  the real fun began. We had some pretty good pileups going on 20 and 40 meters. We had a few operators that worked CW, but the majority of operation was on phone. 

Saturday night we had a steak and chicken barbecue.  Ono Grinds (good food). Our thanks to Karen and Phil for the excellent grilling. 

We were fortunate to have a few visitors from the mainland that stopped by. Some saw our announcement in the Maui paper, but others just spotted the antenna (kind of hard to miss the rhombic). We we glad to see them and some of the visiting amateurs took the time to operate KH6RS for a few minutes.

We finished operating and took down the Rhombic on Sunday.  Lots of work, but lots of fun. At our July club meeting, we discussed the few things that needed improvement and hopefully we will be able to fix them next year.

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