Two days of Summer - gone!

After a long and miserable Winter, we were finally greeted with two days of Spring/Summer last Friday and Saturday. Daily high temperatures reached into the 80s (29C), and both days were sunny. So of course, for the ARRL Rookie Roundup, we were presented with a return to Winter!

As the last few years, we set up at Putnam Park, a local park here in South Plainfield.  I think even Dave KD2FSI was feeling the chill as he kept the setup to a modest two rig, two antenna affair.  When the weather is good, Dave usually gets out everything but the kitchen sink, but given how dang cold it was, he did his usual stellar job.

How cold was it? At the time we started, it was only 42F (5.5C) an entire 40 degrees F lower than the day before. The killer was the breeze.  Checking into my weather station at home via my smartphone, we had 4-5 MPH continuous winds with occasional gusts to 8-10 MPH.  Hardly hurricane weather; but it was enough to chill you to the bone.

Why not operate from inside? When SPARC participates in these kind of events, we like to make them as public as possible, so as to maybe generate a little public enthusiasm for Amateur Radio. There weren't many visitors to the park on this cold, breezy, gray day - but there were a few, and you never know when you're going to get a chance to plant that seed.

Oh, and for those of you out there who think I'm a biased shill for Elecraft, we used exclusively Dave KD2FSI's Yaesu equipment and it worked very, very well, indeed!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!