STERLING PARK AMATEUR RADIO CLUB
2004 Field Day

The Sterling Park Amateur Radio Club held its most successful Field Day in many years on the weekend of June 26th and 27th.  After two years at Stone Ridge High School, due to summer contruction at our usual site, Park View High School in Sterling, we were able to return to Park View this year.  New light poles had been installed on the practice field that we use for our activity.  Although they were metal (the old ones were wood), the light structure at the top was not too complex, which allowed for our sling shot technique to easily get a couple of ropes up about 80 or 90 feet to the top of two poles.  Much better than the 30 or 40 foot parking lot poles that we used last year at Stone Bridge.

The club purchased two tents this year which were used to house our three HF stations plus our GOTA station.  Ray Mullins, KD4RSL, set up the VHF station in his own tent.  He had a new mast with rotor and beams for both 6 and 2 meters, and they worked like a charm.  Power was supplied by our trusty antique generator ably maintained by Russ Thomason, W3RST.  The three HF stations were networked using CT, and the GOTA and VHF stations used hand logging.  About 17 club members participated, and visitors brought our total to 25.  Visitors included a number of folks that just stopped by, our local school board member, plus a run through by a girls athletic team (without tripping over antenna or tent guys) and a 1:00 AM visit by school security - and we didn't have our permission form on the premises.

After combining the computer and hand logs, we wound up with a net total of 1236 QSOs.  This resulted in a claimed score of 3692 from 586 CW QSOs, 24 digitial QSOs, and 626 phone QSOs which included 131 from the GOTA station and 42 from the VHF station, with a power factor of "2" for our 100 watt tranceivers.  This was a significant improvement over last year, due to a number of factors.  Not only did the higher poles allow for our wire antennas - a Carolina Windom and G5RV - to be raised to a good height and thus be more effective, but Don Sambol, K7CS, provided a 40 foot mast that we were able to use to support the club's two element tribander.  In recent years we've merely hauled the driven element up a lamp post as a trap dipole.  And we had lots of operating support, including all night CW operations by Don, and Phone operations by Jim Chappell, AF4MO, who also set up his newly acquired Butternut vertical.  Lots of folks provided support for various bonus points, and we only missed a few hundred of those possible.  If all 1350 claimed bonus points are allowed, our total score would be 5042.

           73, Dick, W2YE