W2LJ's Blog - QRP - Do More With Less.

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A very special evening

Posted: 03 Mar 2016 05:34 PM PST
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The South Plainfield Amateur Radio Club has two meeting nights each month.
The fourth Wednesday of each month is our "official" business meeting,
where we take care of all the normal matters that come before any Amateur
Radio club.

The first Wednesday of each month is our "Operating Night" meeting. This
tradition was instituted by our founding and current Club President, Marv
K2VHW. His idea was to have an evening set aside where the older members
of the club could meet with the newer Amateur Radio ops and engage with
them about some radio or operating related topic.


Marv has been down and out with some back troubles, so at our February
meeting, Ron N2LCZ suggested that for the March operating night, that we
should do an NPOTA activation. The Washington-Rochambeau National
Historical Trail (TR23) runs right in front of our meeting place, the South
Plainfield CERT Building, which is on the corner of Hamilton Boulevard and
New Market Avenue - Hamilton Boulevard is part of the trail.

We are, quite literally, only about 25 feet or so from the roadway, and the
Trail. Our meeting place was originally a gasoline filling station that
was originally converted by the South Plainfield Police Department into a
satellite Community Policing Building. When the SPPD took over the mantle
of Emergency Management, they generously offered use of the building to the
South Plainfield CERT/RACES team. SPARC was allowed to use the building
for its meetings.


So last night we got together to put NJ2SP on the air. Dave KD2FSI set up
some equipment, his Yaesu HF transceiver and ran some coax out to the
screwdriver antenna on his van. Power was provided by a PowerWerx deep
cycle battery. We started out on 20 Meters, where unfortunately, we had a
close to S9 noise level. Even so, we made QSOs from the West coast to
Suriname.

When 20 Meters dried up, we switched over to 40 Meters where the background
noise level was slightly lower, but the incoming signals were much louder.
And that's where the bulk of our 51 QSOs were made. We were busy for the
better part of an hour.

The best part about it all was that neither Dave or I made the QSOs. I sat
there as a logger and "QSO Coach" (and control operator) while some of the
other members of SPARC, who have no regular access to HF took over. It was
not hard to tell that they had a blast and after one or two QSOs, they were
behaving like HF veterans.

The high point of the evening was when a visiting YL sat down and took over
the microphone. I scribbled out a brief script for her, so she would know
what to say and she took off and hit the ground running. 40 Meters seemed
like it was quieting down, but as soon as her voice went over the air, the
dam broke loose and we had another pileup on our hands. Lee Ann has visited
our club a few times and is deciding whether or not she would like to
pursue obtaining her own license.

I am willing to bet that last night sealed the deal.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!