On August 17, 2008 Ron AE6QU and his friend Kevin AD7OI participated in The ARRL 10 GHz and up contest. The objective of the contest is for North American Amateurs to contact as many Amateur stations in as many different locations as possible from 10GHz through light.

Ron and Kevin set up their equipment on the Lawn Bowling Court by Clubhouse 2 and made 5 contacts.

NEWS ALERT: ARRL has just released the official scores for Field Day. Our score coincides with our submission. See page 75 December Edition of QST.

Another Field Day has passed and we earned about the same number of points as last year. It was a successful operation as it shows that we have the capability of setting up emergency communications should the need arise.I have heard reports from other groups and all have reported the same or lower scores due to band conditions.

Our engine generator crew, Charlie KG6EQK and Dick KD6IEE once again set up and maintained our emergency power for 24 hours without any outage except for a one time problem with security. Antenna raising crew consisted of Art K7TX, Ernie W6ETS, Jeremy W7YG, Hans N6LOM, Lee K6QAX, Don KE6EPB and Jack KF6SGT,

Art K7TX and Jim K6EEE (a non-member) worked CW. The husband and wive team of Diane N6TWA and Jeremy W7YG, as well as Lee KD6QAX, Hans N6LOM, and Warren KF6VV worked HF Phone, Dick KD6IEE, worked VHF/UHF Phone and Ernie W6ETS worked Digital. As an added treat we served Hot Dogs for an evening meal and that brought out the XL'S and YXL'S of many members.

We made 67 CW contacts, 99 Phone contacts and 17 Digital contacts giving us a score of 534. Together with our 750 bonus points we had a grand total of 1284 whuch is 18 points less than last year. A good time was had by all.

Look at the Field Day pictures on the picture page.

On Saturday November 15, 2008 Orange County RACES held its yearly City/ County drill. This year the theme was that a magnitude 7.8 earthquake had occurred along the Southern San Andres fault from the vicinity of The Saltan Sea running generally North and West along a line to Ventura.

Laguna Woods City Hall EOC was manned by Art K7TX, Ernie W6ETS, Lee K6QAX and Doug Reilly Assistant City Manager.

The following traffic was handled:

• 8 Messages Sent
  Fullerton
  Hospital Group
  Irvine
  Mission Viejo
  Orange County RACES

 We now have a 2 meter repeater in operation thanks to a donation of a Vertex Standard VXR 7000 Repeater.The repeater and a duplexer was donated by George WA6BLR. The test period TASMA assigned us is over and we are officially listed on the assigned frequency. Use it as much as possible and note any abnormalities during your contact. We want to determine the repeater's coverage, any problems you encounter getting into the repeater and any reception problems.

We are trying to get a repeater group together on Wednesday EVENING AT 1900. Join us, any licensed amateur is welcome. Get to know the members of our club.

The EOC at Laguna Woods City Hall has some new RACES additions. We installed a Alpha Delta multi band parallel dipole in addition to the 4 Band vertical on the roof.
A RIGrunner distribution strip and a Yaesu FT-857D ultra compact HF/VHF/UHF 100 watt all mode transceiver was recently purchased by the city for the EOC.
HF contacts have been made and everything is working. A computer with internet access has also been added.We have upgraded our RACES communication capabilities to acheive maximum communications during an emergency.