I spent about 8 hours at the AARO Field Day at Raymond Russell Park, where they almost ended up with a Marachi Band for entertainment (band went to the wrong pavilion), then moved on to visit the KARS Ham Club in Boerne before swinging back down south around midnight to the SARC Ham Club in Shavano Park.
By the time I left SARC, still running on those 5 hour energy drinks, I started to head south to ROOST, knowing they would be still running full steam ahead even in the middle of the night, but sanity prevailed, and I advised my “extra” wife that I’d be heading home soon instead of visiting more FD sites this weekend.
I used my cell phone to make some videos and take some pics, but the phone battery died & had to be recharged after I left AARO, so no middle of the night pics from KARS or SARC to be shared. I’ve been promised pics from other hams who were at those locations, however.
AARO did a 1 day only FD event, starting setup around 10am when the park opened (county park hours restricted how long they could stay there), and shutting down & leaving before midnight when the county park turned into a pumpkin one more. They were running 6 stations in different modes (voice / digital / cw / satellite) on various bands, and had more antennas and generators than I’ve seen in a long time.
Most of the actual radio operators were taking it very seriously, but the bulk of the 50+ hams were just there for the workshops, free food & fellowship. A few were experimenting with different antennas, mostly home brew, and learning new modes. There were a handful of brand new hams show up, and AARO took extra time to show them the operations and get them talking on the air to make a contact or two.
Workshops also were conducted on various topics:
- Proper Soldering Techniques
- Building DiPole Antennas
- Quadrafillic (sp?) Antennas
- Anderson Power Pole
Click the link below to continue this article & see some of the pics I took.
I’ll work on getting the videos online, but that will take longer due to their sizes and a need to edit out some background noise, etc.
June 24th, 2012 at 9:22 PM
This PRMaleMan was also out there in the 100 F, but by the time I got off around 5 PM, had no desire to remain out in the heat any longer. Plans were to join in the teardown Sunday morning, but there was no Sunday action for AARO. Oh well…there is always next year. Thanks for the pics and article, Lee!
73 Jorge
WP4KTF@Yahoo.com