Jun 07

Field Day Announcement

The 1900 Group is planning a Field Day Expedition to Assateague Island, Maryland on June 25th-27th 2010.

Assateague is a desirable operating location for 2 reasons. The first, it’s an IOTA (island on the air), NA-139 is it’s identification. Secondly, it’s in grid square FM-28 which will be a demanded locator if the 6 meter band opens up.

Eric, WG3J has spent countless hours/days working to acquire the necessary permits for operation on the site. Most of that time was spent working with the Park Service for authorization to operate. We plan to be located approximately 100 yards North of the Virginia / Maryland border along the shore.

The website for the operation is finally online. Check it out here!

Jul 14

Weekend update.

This last weekend was a ham radio packed weekend. On Saturday morning I arrived at the club station (aka The Milk House) with 746 in hand and setup for the IARU HF World Championship. Dave, K3GMT; Howard, KB3RTB; and Ben, KB3CTX would also setup to join in the competition. Collectively as operators we knew we were far from any award winning experience, just the fun of competing.

By 9:30AM some of us were on the air, myself on 15 meter where activity was starting to build as the band was opening. Throughout the day I would eventually end up on 20 meter where I would find the DX chaos. Approximately 12 hours into the competition a large thunderstorm began to role in causing us all to take an unintended break. This would be the end of the competition for me with 102 QSO’s logged with approximately 7300 points.

On Sunday Laurie and I went up to Sussex county NJ to a hamfest where we put on a D-Star TV demo with DLARC member, Howard (KB3RTB) and a number of NJDSTAR members. A lot of attention was drawn around the booth as the first pictures were transferred. While there I purchased the parts to build a D-Star hotspot and picked up a Heathkit SWR/Wattmeter for Laurie’s rig.

Photos to come.