Come and gone - again.

Before I begin, some sights from SPARC Field Day 2024, I provided some sounds on the previous post:

Dave KD2FSI setting up the 6 Meter antenna and VHF/UHF Antennas.

We were visited by Councilman Derryck White. That's Bill W2AOF, the Councilman, Tim AB2ZK behind him and Marv K2VHW to the right.

Marty WB2BEW hard at work making SSB contacts.

Dave KD2FSI making FT8 contacts and Dave was also our GOTA Coach.

KD2FSI and K2VHW burning the Midnight oil.

A panoramic shot of Spring Lake Park and our Field Day site courtesy of Mario KD2HPF

The anniversary banner proudly displayed. Photo by KD2HPF

Harry KC2PGX playing with lemons - more about that below. Photo by KD2HPF.

And there was cake!

So where does one begin? We'll start by a brief weather report. It was hot, hot, HOT! The heat and humidity and thunderstorms made this Field Day an extra effort this year, but it turned out to be worth it. Set up and tear down were not complicated by rain, but working in the hot sun takes its toll, especially when you're not a spring chicken anymore!

Despite the weather, this was perhaps our best Field day effort ever. We had a lot of visitors, and the educational activity with the kids was a success - at least IMHO. We had five kids show up and we explained what batteries were and how they worked. Then the kids were each given a lemon, some copper and zinc coated nails and a cheapie Harbor Freight VOM.  The got to see their lemons actually produced voltage from anywhere from 0.8 V to a little over a Volt. And we all found out together, courtesy of Harry KC2PGX, that it takes six lemons connected in series to light up a 2 Volt LED.

After the educational activity, there was pizza and cake. That, of course was more satisfying and welcome than the educational activity, but the kids and their parents or grandparents left happy, I think.

We also had a few non-member Hams show up to guest operate and the kids who came for the educational activity attempted to make contacts on the GOTA station, thanks to the watchful eye and coaching of Dave KD2FSI.

Because of the educational activity and the thunderstorms, there might be fewer QSOs in the log this year. We had to shut down and disconnect antennas three times during the event. The thunderstorms were pretty intense with some pretty close lightning strikes. Marb K2VHW was keeping an eye on that via https://map.blitzortung.org/ In all we may have lost a good two or three hours of operating time.

But the time we were able to spend on the bands was time well spent. There was a ton of activity and we were making contacts right up until around 1:00 PM on Sunday when it seemed that activity was significantly slowing down and we decided to pack it in.

From the top of my foggy head, I believe we made 230 CW contacts, 97 FT8 contacts and about 75 or so SSB contacts - all at 5 Watts, all done on battery powered transceivers. The two MFJ end feds once again did an outstanding job for us. Great results with a minimum of hassle in time and effort to spend setting them up and stowing them away. And Ol'' Sol behaved this weekend! No solar flares or Coronal Mass Ejections to ruin the weekend with HF blackouts.

The core group of SPARC members did an outstanding job of pulling Field Day 2024 off. I'm proud and honored to be a member of that core group. And publicly, I would like to state that it was another honor and pleasure to be partnered up with Marv K2VHW as the primary CW ops. Marv is by far the best CW op that I know. I'm nowhere close to being in his league and I appreciate being teamed up with him.

Before I close - a disclaimer. Please excuse any typos or other goofs I may have made in this post. My brain is still in a fog from the spending the majority of the weekend without sleep. I don't think I've messed up too badly.

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!