The Field Day Fiasco
Well even though quite a few of the club members seemed to have lost theirzest for this year’s Field Day I sure hadn’t, and I went over to the20-meter station, ran by Sam. Sam was a ham’s ham, a real DX expert. I askedSam if I could help him out, and he told me that I could do the logging forhim. Great, as this was finally my chance to put some contacts down for theclub. However, after only about five minutes or so, Sam told me ratherbluntly to leave his operating position, as he was getting very annoyed atme and my yelling “Yeah, way to go Sam!” after each contact he made. Gee, Iwas only trying to cheer him on.
Undaunted, I went over to the breakfast table to catch a bite to eat. Ifigured that Sam would need my assistance again after I had eaten. Perhapsthen he would have regained his enthusiasm for this year’s Field Day. On myway back from breakfast I nearly tripped over some coax cable that wascarelessly lying on the ground. With the condition that many of the clubmembers were in at this point I figured that it would be best for me to moveit, before someone had another accident.
So I gave the coax a good yank. Atprecisely that same moment however, there must have been a huge gust ofwind, because Mike’s 6-meter radio suddenly flew right off of his operatingtable, smashing into the ground! So much for the club’s VHF stationoperation… Boy was the club ever having bad luck this year.Well, at least I did avert any accidents by moving that coax.
I continued on to Sam’s 20-meter operating position, he had Joe, who seemeda bit calmer now, logging for him. I didn’t want to further upset Joe orbother Sam, so I tried to stay quiet. I noticed that their 30-foot towerthat they had erected was swaying a bit in the wind, so I went and gotmy truck and tied a guy wire to the end of it and secured their tower to mybumper.
Sam and Joe were doing great at this point and both got ecstatic when aP5 came on frequency and responded to their call. Then I noticed thatsomeone hadn’t taped up a coax connector for the station they wereoperating. Wow, I would hate to have seen them lose a contact or have anothermalfunction, so I quickly un-did the connector on the coax cable, to cleanit, then fastened it back up and taped it up.
It really was too bad that Sam couldn’t ever get that P5 to come backagain… I don’t know what happened, and neither did they. Before Sam andthe P5 could exchange signal reports their HF radio quit receiving suddenlyfor a minute. We never could figure out what caused it. It really wasn’ta good way to end Field Day, and just made this year’s event the club’sworst ever. The club members claimed that a curse had befallen them thisyear, and I was beginning to agree at this point.
I felt bad for the club, and I did have to leave a little early, as I hadsome yard work that needed to get done, so I offered to drive anyone homewho needed a lift, but no one took me up on it. Some of them must really beinto physical fitness, as more than one of them said that they would ratherwalk home. I left about an hour early, while Sam and Joe were still tryingto get that P5 back and make some more contacts before Field Day wasofficially over.
So it was a long lonely drive home for me. However, an oddthing happened to me. I noticed when I got home that I had three 10-footsections of tower tied behind my truck! Wow, this was very fortunate for me,as I needed a tower. Maybe one of the club members thoroughly appreciated myefforts helping out at Field Day this year, and decided to give me the towersections as a surprise.
Oh well, as they say, there’s always next year! And boy, I can hardly waitto help out with the club next year at Field Day! I’m already lookingforward to it. I plan to be much more helpful too.
The End.
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