This year, for the first time, I was able to operate in the Adventure Radio Society's annual Flight of the Bumblebees contest as one of the bumblebees. I was signed up as BB# 233. My original plan was to ride my bike to Charlestown Park, just outside of Phoenixville. The weather forecast looked pretty grim, however, so I drove to the park and walked a short distance to an unused picnic pavillion.
This was the first outing for a brand new Hendricks PFR-3a that I had completed just the day before. I used a 26 foot wire antenna that I hoisted up into a nearby tree. I laid out one 33-foot and three 16-foot counterpoise wires. The PFR-3a's built-in tuner had some trouble matching this antenna on 40 meters, as did a standalone BLT. Eventually, I wound up using my trusty homebrew Z-match to do the job on both 40 and 20 meters.
After spending some time fiddling with antennas and equipment, I finally got on the air. I started on 40 meters and worked a few stations, including my old friend, Carter N3AO in Virginia. I switched over to 20 meters and quickly worked a very loud N4BP. As I was finishing up that QSO, a storm was moving in and the wind started picking up. When I heard some thunder and saw a flash of lightning, I decided to wrap things up for the day.
My day didn't go exactly as I had planned but I had some fun being out there. Oh well... There's always next year, I guess.
73, Craig WB3GCK
NAME: Craig LaBarge CALLSIGN: WB3GCK (BB# 223) LOCATION: Charlestown Park, Charlestown Township, PA TOTAL NUMBER OF CONTACTS: 5 TOTAL NUMBER OF BUMBLEBEES: 5 SCORE: 5 x (5 x 3) = 75 LOG: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BAND DATE UTC CALL RST-S RST-R S-P-C NR ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 40 07/28/13 1745 KS8M/BB 559 559 OH BB# 80 40 1749 N3AO/BB 569 559 VA BB# 24 40 1805 WA4GIR/BB 589 589 NC BB# 400 40 1812 WA1ZCQ/BB 559 559 MA BB# 112 20 07/28/13 1820 N4BP/BB 599 599 FL BB# 82