Stuart's points are well put in my humble opinion.
If the ARRL followed Lou's suggestions, I'd wager that the participation in
Field Day would tend to diminish rather rapidly than what it seems to be
these days.
I've enjoyed the 40+ years I've participated in Field Day and plan on
continuing the tradition.
It's been an interesting trip to see the innovations over the years with
computers, digital communications of various types, improvement in gear, the
strategies in antennas / power sources / etc. and the encouragement of VHF /
UHF operation plus amateur satellites. I, for one, probably would not have
invested in VHF / UHF gear if it weren't for the encouragement of it during
the ARRL Field Day.
For our FD group this event is a marathon run and the bands are busy during
at least the first 24 hours. I'm kind of disappointed though in that we've
noticed that the activity drops dramatically after the first 24 hours which
pretty much defeats the idea of setting up on Saturday afternoon rather than
the night before. For us old guys setting up on Friday night sure makes it
a bit easier to make it for a busy 24 hour Field Day.
It's still a challenge to be able to copy that W1AW message and also to
relay that Field Day message to your section's SCM or SEC. Just finding
someone willing to take a break from a string of QSOs to QSP takes some
skill and daring.
I think that Simulated Emergency Test is where it's at for testing your
emergency readiness. Perhaps Lou wasn't aware of such a specialized
activity. SET and FD are different animals otherwise we'd only have one and
not the other.
My 73, Dave W9TG
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