The field day that I attended was rather kind of ok.. The only thing that
it lacked was a TenTEC rig of some sort. In a "kinda'" of rural area of
South Texas generators are plenteful as are air conditioned equiptment
buildings..
About 10 pm Sat I decideed to head for the pasture to see what was going on
and check things out. I was very impressed because they were doing so well
with so little. Someone had had picked up couple of old surplus laptops from
an area plant. They were interfaced together and functioned as a network.
Self completing log entries "dupe alerts" and all.
The CW guy just had to type in calls and hit function keys to respond. I
helped tune his Yaesu to the signals for a while. Guess what came to
mind? This reflector.. Wouldn't be nice if a current TenTec was interfaced
too? I remembered all the interface comments as of late.
Man Power was low. So a couple vertical antennsas were set up. They work
great since the soil is conductive and the water table is very close at
hand. Contacts were continuous.
I stayed a few hours and operated..(to My Surprise) It was easy.. even with
the crummy Icom HF Rig.. There were just no one else operating phone
because the number of area licensees is so small. i wanted to help the group
end up with at least a few points.. They ended up respectable.
Well FD, even with old gear is OK. But old gear nowadays includes
computers.. I hated all the contest logging and dupe sheets with a passion.
Larry Greenberg, N5BEA
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