Field Day morning dawned bright and warm.  It had been in the low twenties most of the week before (and then some) so we were anticipating a dry day.

Ralph arrived at the Ruth Johnson Park, our planned Field Day site at about 0845 and set up the two meter beam on a pole.  Called on the repeater for any activity, but none transpired.  Ralph set up a 10ft mast and strung a 20 meter inverted vee to ‘test the waters’.  When he turned on the radio, an ICOM 706, he found that the noise level was almost too much to bear, being almost S9.  Matt, VA7TAV  joined him during the set up and helped hold wires etc as there was not much to do.  Deme, VE7CRT showed up, and Ralph showed him the S9 noise on the radio, Deme commented that it could possibly be from the power lines running along North Bluff Road.  Jim, VE7UVL showed up at that point and joined the discussion.

It was decided to break down the station, and move down to the area in the trees just south of the Centennial Arena where we had operated our ‘mini’ field day a few weeks before.  Matt and Ralph took down the antennas and packed them away and joined Deme and Jim who had set up in the trees.  In hindsite, it was likely a better choice, weatherwise, as operating from the Ruth Johnson site would have been a continual search for shade. 

In any case, Jim strung up his G5RV and set up his radio.  It wasn’t too long before he was making a few pre Field Day contacts and making sure everything was working well.  We began on 20SSB and made a  number of contacts, when Ralph moved to 20 CW and made a number more.  We were joined briefly by Ken, VE7KBN as well as Don, VA7GL and his wife Pam, VE7PFH. 

We operated for a number of hours, until Jim had to shut down due to a commitment later in the afternoon. 

All in all, a good operation, not too many from the club came around, there were no city officials, but a number of the public walking in the park stopped by to see what was going on.