It has happened officially! K1TTT entered FD in the 0D
class. He was working packet from home, using commercial power and NO
transmitter. I have a pretty good idea that he was going in via the
internet and his computer, sans the formality of a radio connection. I
tried to find a path to
hassle him, but if I did, he did not bite. He exchanged
FD reports via DX spots just like many of the guys were doing.
This is a pioneering effort, in 20 or 30 years when ALL of us are in the
old folks home, probably with no RF fields permitted by the EPA, this is
what we will have left of Field Day. It may not be quite as much fun as
sunburn and bug bites and poison ivy, but tracking down connections could
be the great sport that K1DG envisioned a few years back. ( I think it was
Doug that wrote the article on future contesting, if not it was one of
those guys with a great sense of humor).
It is a shame that we can't somehow teach visitors and regular users of the
Packet Cluster(tm) how it is supposed to work, with very slick TALK
messages quite workable. However:the workarounds that have been employed,
seem to get information thru the system, even though it certainly is a
major waste of bandwidth. It may be a good test of the robustness of our
links. Nothing smoked at my node.
73 Chas K3WW (I hope conditions were poor...noise was very
low but score down from last effort 2 years ago...could just be the old age
factor...I'll wait for the results to come in )
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