KF3M	Hanover Area Hamming Association Hanover, Pennsylvania

June 2007 Club Meeting

Thursday. June 14, 2007.

The program for the evening was supposed to be "Field Day School." We started the evening with some known problems. After we finally selected a plan for the field day antennas, we were offered the use of a tri-band 3 element yagi. This was too good to pass up but now the antenna plan had to be completely re-done. Also most of the students had operated field day before so there was not a lot to "teach" them. Part of the class was a set of antenna patterns drawn on transparent material and fixed to a great circle map of the USA. Rotate the transparency and see if the antenna was covering the areas where there were lots of contacts to made. Soon the "students" were disappearing to the field day site armed with the maps and looking for new ideas. Soon the instructor was left with one student who actually was a very experienced field day operator. She was also more intent on her knitting that re-learning what she already knew.

So the instructor shut down the class and joined the students on the carnival grounds. Now the Boy Scouts had just finished an activity in the parking lot. The sight of several men with really funny maps, a compass and a 100 foot tape measure running from tree to tree was just too much for the Scout Master. Soon he was fully involved in the antenna planning. He actually had some good suggestions - but he was not sure about those funny looking maps. In the end, the students came up with a good antenna plan for the location available.

So how did the evening go? We have a good plan for field day The Scout Master is almost hooked on ham radio. And the instructor is saying "Where did I go wrong?" After the "class" was over, meaning it was too dark to see the trees anymore, we dug into the refreshments. We had a few cookies left over. That means were about one student short of a full class.

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