When Pigs fly with Bees

Greetings from the Flying Pigs QRP International North Central Tennessee Chapter... This get together was all about Bumble Bees.... Yep the Bees were buzzing here in Clarksville and the Flying Pigs were trying our best to catch as many as we could. This radio event is put together by the Adventure Radio group in California http://www.arsqrp.blogspot.com/. Give it a look see and you too might become a Bumble Bee.
We started talking about doing the Bumble Bee contest several months ago at one of our pig pen retreats after the morning net. Just for info you are all invited to join our net every morning at 1255Z on 7.115 MHz (40 meters) give or take a couple of KC's for QRM. We are on Monday through Saturday. Stop on by and give us a shout...
We got our Bumble Bee number and were all set when Terry N5HOT reminded us that our local C.A.T.S. Club here in Clarksville was going to be testing on the same day as the contest. Well it just so happens that three of us are also VE's for the test so we decided to go out after the test to a local park near where we were testing.
Around 1330 hours local time we left the test session and made our way to Civitan Park, located not far from our test site. http://www.yellowpages.com/clarksville-tn/mip/civitan-park-455124755 Terry-N5HOT, Doc-NV4T, Lewis-KF4WK and myself John-KM6NN all showed up at about the same time and we went to work checking out the lay of the land for our operating location and antenna set up. We were the only ones at the covered picnic site so we set up our radios and antenna near the edge so we could get access to the trees nearby. As it happened a stand of trees was near our pavilion so we opted for a single wire antenna fed to the back of the K3 radio. We put the long wire to the center conductor and a 30 foot ground wire to the ground side. We used an adapter to hook it up to the radios PL 259 connector and away we went. It was not all that easy at first to put up the wire in the tree but with a little help from a water bottle and a good toss we were on the air in no time. We started on 20 meters and the K3 tuned the wire antenna like gang busters.
Doc was set up by Terry for the straight key and in no time he had NE5DL-Bee # 111 in the log. Next I got on and bam WV0H-Bee # 555 was in the log. It looked like we were on a three digit same number roll. That all changed when K6EI-Bee # 43 came on.... all the way from the west coast. Moving right along on the band.... just about half a KC or more another Bee was burning up the airways AB9CA-Bee # 15 was on all the way from Michigan . He seems to move around a bit according to his QRZ.com info. We wound up working 12 stations before we shut down. Two were on 40 meters and 10 on 20 meters. All but one had a Bee number and N4BP was working out of Florida with only 5 watts. What a great time we had.... I wish you all could have been around to help out. It took no time to close down the station and we left the area cleaner than when we started. It never hurts to do a little extra clean up. Thanks for stopping by and reading our story. We will see you on the air and oh yea.... oink oink 72 from John and the Flying Pig Gang....