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Events & Activities |
MDARC Field Day 2009The MDARC Field Day will be held in Concord at the Salvation Army parking lot, 3950 Clayton Road (at the intersection of Clayton plot Road and West Street) on the weekend of June 26, 27 and 28. Our Field Day Chairman is Lauren Styles, WA6CIE. Volunteer operators are needed. Lauren will be in charge of the 20 and 15 m operation. Larry Lecrone WW6USA will be in charge of the 80, 40 and 10 m operation. We will also set up a UHF and VHF operation. Food will be provided throughout the weekend. T-shirts will be provided for our volunteer operators. MDARC Field Day 2008
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I
n addition, there were some things that some people learned about antenna matching. A 4:1 balun does not work with a dipole! There was also a vertical antenna which never ended up being put to use, it could never be matched on any useful band (36m anyone?).
Friday was also a
wonderful day for the club on the public relations front. The nice
gentleman over at KGO radio, Greg Edmonds, stopped by for an eyeball
QSO, as well as an interview for their afternoon news segment. We got a
short news blurb at around 16:36 (give or take a couple minutes...but
who's really
counting, right?)
By
dinner time, we had the beams up for 20m, 15m, 6m, 2m, as well as 440.
Speaking of dinner, the Salvation Army generously offered their
services, cooking all
the meals for the
on-site group. They gave us a very delicious spread, and there were some
people (you know who you are) who showed up regularly for the meals, yet
were mysteriously absent most of the rest of the time.
Once dinner had been had by all, we started getting
ready for what we thought would be a
"walk in the park". Prior to the
event, I had walked the area with some members from the field day roster,
as well as with some people from the City of Walnut Creek. We identified
what we thought would be the sprinklers to watch out for during the
overnight hours. We had been told that the sprinklers could not be
turned off, without disabling the entire park, which the Recreation Dept. would
not do for us. They were willing to do a lot, but not quite that much.

Thinking we were prepared, we set out with our
flashlights, placed buckets, garbage cans and coolers in front of or on
top of the sprinklers we knew about. Little did we know, there were two
designs of sprinkler: one that was readily visible from above, a second
that was... well... NOT.
At 1:26 (yes, that's a 24hr time), it was the latter sprinklers
that really tore into us. I do believe that the most amazing spectacle
of the night was Lauren Styles� qualifying round for the
"High Jump from
Prone Position" Olympic sport. We had apparently missed about 6
sprinkler heads, one of which was strategically aimed directly at Lauren
upon activation.
We spent the next hour making sure
the ones we missed were covered, and no new ones popped up to spoil our
fun. Apparently the way the system operates is unknown even to the city:
heads popped up at random locations for random durations at random times
- sounds a lot a game of whack-a-mole.
Regardless of how wet we all ended up that night, we slept
relatively soundly. It, of course, helped a lot that we were exhausted
from putting antennas up, running around in the dark covering
sprinklers, and all around just being up for nearly 20 hours at this
point.
The following morning, the canteen was ready and operating by the time
we got up, preparing the morning's breakfast. I believe this was when
the coffee started brewing, and it didn't really stop until well into
the next morning.
Promptly at 11:00, we started operating radios as part of the contest
itself. From the beginning, the club trailer, which was supposed to be
the GOTA station, was busy instead, as the information station. We had
people constantly passing by, asking things along the lines of
"What's with all the antennas?"
We really enjoyed a very high profile at this site, and by my count, we
had approximately 45 people physically present at one time at one point.
Overall, the club did quite well, points-wise, as we had a lot of the
bonus points for putting out a press release, inviting public officials,
actually having some of those public officials show up, and not to
mention we didn't do too shabbily on the air.
All in all, though we had a rough time during setup, and there were some
hiccups during the event itself, we made for a wonderful showing, and
the city is asking us how much space we want to use next year. Maybe we
can show them next year how large MDARC truly is, and takeover the
entire area of the park we were in. If anyone has any advice, equipment,
time, or other "consumables" we might be able to use either during the
planning for, or execution of field day, please don't hesitate to speak
up for next year.

We will hopefully do better next year, this time with many more
people involved in the organization and planning of the event itself, so
we don't get too overwhelmed again. There is also discussion of moving
the club picnic to fall on that Saturday, so we can double our turnout
possibly. Either way, we'll have a lot of fun next year, though
hopefully, without a lot of the pitfalls that befell us this year. Look
forward to seeing everyone out there this next year!
View photos from this year's MDARC field day activities at Heather Farms
Park, compliments of:
-
Richard Lueck
-
Jason Chavez -W9JPC
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