This year we decided to operate Kids Day because I have a 11 year old Granddaughter who has been interested in radio for a few years. Hailey has faithfully traveled to numerous ham fests with me over the years. So we set up the station to make it easier for her to use and went over the exchange several times. We started slow letting her hear some of the other activity so she could see that it was not that hard.

After a few minutes of listening it was time to key up. She began calling CQ Kids Day just like a pro, I must say I was impressed she was operating like a pro. I took a few minutes to set up the streaming video so everyone could watch. It took a few minutes but finally somebody answered her call and it was like magic her face just lit up and she was hooked.

While conditions were not the best it did not matter to her because she was having fun, so much fun that after we took a break for supper I dozed off in the recliner Hailey was quick to remind me that we needed to get back at it. I think she may just be a contester in the making.

I would recomend this to anyone with children or grand children there is a lot of fun to be had and a great way to spend a little quality time together.

I would like to thank the following stations for taking the time to answer her calls and making it a special day for both me and her. These operators KQ4G,KI4SJI,N2HGL,KE4IFK,KG4WYU,KJ4SLY,K4PHR and KA6DAS are true gentlemen and helped Amateur Radio gain another operator. While she did not make a hundred contacts the eight that she did make were memorable. She has already ask when she can get back on the air, and wants to get her ticket.

Its been awhile since we posted an Article but that does not mean we have been inactive. We have continued work on the station and added another operator, Fabrice Collin K4KDX. Fabrice was a Ham in his home country of France and an active contester. We decided to use the Worked all Germany contest as a warm up for the CQ WW at the end of the month.

As with any outing there is always a few things to work out but the issues are becoming smaller each time which means we are getting the bugs worked out finally. We operated this event more as a casual event then a competition so everyone could become acquainted to the operating styles of each other in preparation for CQ WW.

We operated two stations for the event, one station operated the NY QSO party and the other worked WAG. As for antennas we used 2 wire antennas the first was a original Curt Fritzel dipole at about 40 ft it was primarily used for WAG and the second· was an inverted vee at about 60 ft at the peak and has been dubbed "The Big Sexy" (a long story) and was used for the NY QSO party although it performed very well when it was used for WAG. As for radios we used an Icom 746 and a Yaesu FT 1000 and logging was provided by N1MM.

Band conditions were fair for the event but the weather was great. Our goal was to have a good time and fellowship. It was nice to have the extra operator on hand so while two were operating the third could observe or work on other projects.Things proceeded well and we had our usual visitors at the location the property owner and the neighbor. This time the property owner threw us a curve, he suggested we put up a tower and even mentioned that he had three sections if we wanted it. Well needless to say this was great news and to have his support made this even better. While we plan to erect a tower and we have come up with some plans for some more antennas.

While the contest was great the fellowship was even better, during off times we fired up the grill which is now a must on all events. The most memorable event had to be when Fabrice was introduced to Boiled peanuts and Pork Skins. Watching the amazed look on one of our newest citizens face when we told him that you eat them was just priceless. In the photo on the right is Fabrice enjoying his Boiled Peanuts and Tony with a Pork Skin in hand. Its amazing how much fun these two simple things brought so much enjoyment to the evening.

During the contests we were able to test the various antennas to see which performed the best in certain directions and bands. We took notes and filed them away for future reference. We also worked on station grounding and looked at the layout of the station because we are always looking to improve our situation.

As dusk came upon us we· received some more visitors and these visitors were very unexpected. It seems that Coyotes are interested in contesting also. They kept their distance as did we and everybody enjoyed the evening. We built a nice fire and had some supper and hit the old grindstone again to see if we could muster a few more contacts and by this time 40 and 80 meters was starting to come alive. We added a few more points and decided to call it a night about 1:30 A.M.

On Sunday we lowered the antennas and packed things up for the ride home all the while thinking how nice it is going to be to have permanent antennas on location so we could just roll up and connect a few coax cables and be ready to operate. The station has everything already set up it just a matter of connecting power and antennas. The station is also used to support Hall County ARES and all adventures associated with Em-Comm work. Be sure to drop by the Hall County ARES site and see what else we are up to. The ARES group has made some waves in recent months having won the SET and being featured in CQ magazine on several occasions.

As always if you are in the area and want to join in the fun our station is open to any and all, you need not be a seasoned contester just willing to have a little fun.

73· Bob - N4YT

Well this was the first outing in the new portable station so as you can imagine we ran into a few issues. The first being that the station was not completely done but that was not going to stop us.

As with any contest we sat down and reviewed the rules and determined our class our next objective was to decide where we going to set up, since it was the state qso party and we were going to activate Hall county it narrowed down our choices very quickly.

We looked at several topographical maps and found a location that had decent elevation and of course enough trees to support two dipoles. Our location was in NW Hall county at an elevation of 1277' ASL.

The image to the right shows the location of the station, if you look close you can see the station on the ridge. The location was previously an old School that had recently burned down and was commonly referred to as High Hill School. So during the setup of the station we began noticing hidden treasures on the ground. We found a tom a hawk, old horseshoes and old bottles to name a few.

We began stringing dipoles and setting up the generator when a neighbor walked over to see what we were doing, we explained things to him and he determined we were just getting away from the wives which was close the wives were actually getting rid of us. He offered to let us run power from his house which worked out well for both of us (more so for him since he did not have to hear the generator running.) We finished with the dipoles and began organizing everything and getting ready for the party.

That's when Murphy struck for the first time. We forgot to set the dual time zone clock and the contest had started about an hour and a half ago. So we scrambled to finish up and began to tune the radios and good old Murphy came to play again. One of the radios would not tune the dipole so we began checking connections and even took the dipole down to check it at the balun, well come to find out the coax was bad so we opted to run Multi/Single just so we could get on the air since we were already behind.

Once we started operating things started to get better although we did overlook one small item, when setting up the station we forgot to level it out so needless to say there was no problem moving from the front to the back of the unit but returning was somewhat of an uphill battle. Tony (KF4WUI) was a guest operator and is new to contesting but has participated in many field day events over the years did a great job working the pileups over the course of the QSO party and has vowed to participate in more contest in the coming months. While our scores will not win the Georgia QSO Party we did have a good time and learned allot of things about the new portable station and even had a few visitors stop by to join in the fun. While we are not a huge super-station we are a multiple transmitter station that enjoys contesting so if you are in the area and are looking for a place to operate our station is open and waiting.