The local ham store had a Yaesu day Saturday. The store was packed full of hams. The first prize that was given away was a fifty dollar coupon toward any Yaesu purchase. That would have been very useful as I am still waiting on the power supply for the FT-897D. I did look at the radios on display, an FT-2000 and FT-450. I also was able to look at the Lakeview Hamstick dipole mount which is very simple and “wired” correctly, but twice the price of the other mount. I did think about buying and now wish I had bought a set of fifteen meter Hamsticks as they would have been handy Sunday.
The weather turned nice over the weekend. Sunday afternoon was great outside so I packed up all the gear and drove over to the club house to check out the band conditions. I made one contact in Pennsylvania and then found stations calling for the California QSO Party. Forty eight contacts later the contest was over and I needed to get home.
The twenty meter hamsticks were raised on the thirty foot mast, but after a short time I realized that the fifteen meter band was probably going to provide more contacts. So I put up a recently repaired fifteen meter folded dipole. The problem with wire dipoles is that they must be hung for north-south contacts due to the trees and the tower by the building. After a couple of rough contacts I found a saw horse by the building and moved the far end of the dipole out to the street using the saw horse as a tie down point. This made the dipole slope with the center at maybe twenty feet, but it faced the right direction for California contacts. After that contacts were easy again. I had a good time, but forgot to take pictures.
One thing I have avoided thus far is to include computer logging. It is just one more thing to unpack, set up and power. If I had been using a computer to log I would not have forgotten one callsign and issued the same QSO number twice. Computer logging might become a reality for the next Field Day.
Tim
