In preparation for the upcoming Field Day exercise in June, the club decided to do a practice day on May 4th. Since we liked the site at Blackie Spit that we used last year for Field Day, we decided to use the same area again this year. We really liked the area as it is located between the car park and ocean making it very convenient, not to mention scenic! So the only thing that might get in the way of our practice would be bad weather. We may enjoy working a field site but operating outside in bad weather is definitely beyond the call of duty for members of our club.

The morning of May 4th was cool and overcast but it was dry so by 11AM several members were already down at the Spit setting up for the practice. Soon we had most of the club in attendance and were busy stretching out cables and assembling verticals, much to a amusement of the few on-lookers. A few visitors did stop by for a few questions but for the most part they ignored us. We will need to add a table with some welcoming signs for the field day event so that people feel more at ease at coming over and seeing what we are doing.

For this practice we set up two HF radios – Stuart’s Kenwood – 480SAT and Ralph’s Icom – 706G. Stuart was first off the mark and planned to make a number of CW contacts but due to operator error his contact number was quickly surpassed by Ralph on 20m SSB. It wasn’t till just before we were packing up for the day that Stuart was able to correct the setting on his radio.

We had a lot of fun getting out as a club for a few hours and did learn that we may have problems operating two HF stations in that location with our current setup. On Field Day we will also be using a VHF radio and will need to decide then if we can operate a second HF rig.