Veterans Day Surprise 2012

Greetings again from the Flying Pigs of North Central Tennessee.

 This Veterans Day we had high hopes of making many contacts while on one of our outings to our local VFW here in Clarksville Tennessee. We love to go out on traditional holidays and try to contact Special Event stations who are on the air. We had rumors that the weather would not be nice to us this year and dressed for the weather as best we could. The chance of showers and high wind were our big concerns as we usually operate out in the open air to allow passers-by to check out our operation. Terry-N5HOT, Doc-NV4T, Lewis-KF4WK, Richard-KJ4MXI and Kan-KC0JGF were suppose to meet up and give the bands a going over. This year we decided to meet at the local VFW around 10:00 hours local time. I arrived around 09:00 to get the lay of the land and start setting up our antenna. Terry was right behind me and as I was checking out the tree situation he was getting out the equipment needed to set up the antenna. We use an antenna made by Terry which is an off center fed dipole. It has given us good service in the past and we expected the same this outing. As I cleared the area of debris and checked for our table location I noticed that the wind was hooking it in the area where we normally set up. So we moved over to the front of the APC (Armored Personal Carrier) located in front of the VFW. The wind was now at our backs and we used the APC as a wind barrier. The antenna went up in a flash and we soon had the tables set up and the radios and assorted gear arranged on the table. With the wind we found that we had to have everything weighted down that would fly away and it seemed that working any good contacts would be a chore. Not letting anything get into our way of fun we set about tuning around the bands. It seemed that once we had everything set up that the other guys started showing up and giving us suggestions on locations and other things to make operation easier. After review of the suggestions we kept on doing our thing and started band surfing. We started on 20 meters and looked up and down the band for any special event that might be on. It seems that most of the special events are SSB (Single Side Band Voice) type. We try to work just CW as that is our thing so we never even looked into the areas where SSB could have been. As we found someone sending we listened for an opening to give our call. The tuning process takes only a second with the K3 or the KX3 and as it happened the second we tuned a station we heard he would disappear. At first I thought it was just me so I had Terry give it a try. He smiled and found a signal and gave me the helm. I tuned him in and zip... he was gone. We did this on 20 meters for awhile then figured the band was just flaky. So to 40 meters we went and started again searching for signals. I tried for several minutes to find a signal and finally gave up and Terry took over. He did the same thing and we just could not figure out what our problem was. While we were searching the band Kan-KC0JGF showed up. Now this in itself is more special than you know as he is a Clarksville Police officer and his operating time is limited because of his schedule. We sat him down and he began searching. Kan changed the band to 10 meters and in no time he had KW7D-Paul in Deming New Mexico. Paul was having a hard time with Kan's CW and the QSO was over in a flash. What the problem was is Paul is a little faster than a lot of operators and he was moving right along. But between three operators and the wind we got his info and returned his call. Good job Kan.... As it turned out our time was up by then and we had enough searching and enough wind. So we closed down and made our way home to a warm house and a hot cup of coffee. All and all it was a great time but not many contacts. The good part was one of our group who rarely is able to get out made our only contact.. What a fantastic surprise we had on this great Veterans Day 2012. Good job Kan.

Thanks to all those who have given it all and made this outing possible. 72 and so long from myself and all the Flying Pig Gang. dit dit......