Pearl Harbor Day at Fort Defiance

Greetings from the Flying Pigs of North Central Tennessee. If you haven't seen any of our stories this is your chance to get a view of what we try to do with QRP (5 watts) radio. Each year we try to get out and play on the radio during moments of history. We always try to work on Pearl Harbor Day to remember all those who have given the ultimate price to defend our country and way of life. This year the players were KT4FQ-Jim, NV4T-Doc, KF4WK-Lewis, N5HOT-Terry and myself KM6NN-John. Our plans to operate were finalized on Saturday the day before the outing because the weather was a little wild. We did not know if the rain would hold so we made an alternate operating location just in case. The area of Fort Defiance (http://www.cityofclarksville.com/index.aspx?page=161) has always been one of our favorite locations due to the open area for parking and the availability of trees for our wire antenna. Also the fort is on the high ground along the river. One of our concerns was the wind that came up while we were having coffee. We decided to brave the weather and convoyed over to the parking lot of the fort. Once we arrived we circled the vehicles and broke out the antenna and other operating equipment. We chose a direction to put up the off center fed dipole antenna and pulled it up into the trees. We set the antenna up to radiate in a West to East direction. The antenna is never really high off the ground and sometimes it becomes a sloping dipole due to the difference of the height of the trees we pick. We have been doing this type of operating for some time now and it always goes very quick once we are at the operating location.

As is our tradition Doc tries to make the first contact. This time as soon as Doc turned on the K3 and hit the antenna tune button we heard S57DX coming in 599. Doc sent our call out and in no time we were in his log and he was in ours. Now it was my turn and I didn't have to turn the dial very far. PA1FP-Frank in the Netherlands was in our log. Just a little lower and PD3TG-Tom also from the Netherlands was coming in strong. He gave us a 559 but he was in the log never the less..... All of a sudden we could hear XE1FP-Sergio from Mexico booming in. I gave him a moment to clear another QSO and gave him a call..... You guessed it he was in the log. We went on to contact K9NW-Michael in Ohio then Spain, Denmark, Hungry and the old stand by W1AW/9 in Illinois. he was being called by lots of stations but we were able to cut the airways with our 5 watts of pure power. How great is this radio stuff..... As Lewis would say it is FM..... Once again our day was drawn to a close by the cold wind. We checked and it was 39 degrees but the wind chill was 34.... We must be getting old....... We decided to shut down and go get some hot coffee and donuts at one of our old hang outs.... It took no time to pull down the antenna and put away all the operating equipment. Just another day in the lives of Flying Pigs in Clarksville..... Thanks for dropping in and we hope to hear you on the air.....  

  72 from John and the flying Pig gang... oink oink