Last month was the first Aerials in the Park event this year. Though I arrived late and set up by the gate of Long Lake Regional Park, Brandon (callsign forgotten) turned up and lent a hand as I set up. Soon afterwards, N0YNT (Matt) and N0TYE (Paul) joined me. It was a bit blustery and chilly by 4 PM, so we broke it up.
I used a 13-foot tripod and attached an NMO ground-plane kit to the mast with hose clamps. Then, I could use any NMO-mount mobile antenna for FM work. My Yaesu FT-897 had the internal NiMH battery packs (FNB-78), so I was limited to 20W (10W on UHF). That pretty much left me with FM repeaters to work with, as I had no directional antenna for simplex. It interesting how many distant repeaters I could hit from that location.
For the next event (5/10), I've been contemplating using a DMount and two ten-metre ham-sticks for some SSB/CW, as there wouldn't be any concerns of interfering with neighbours' electronics at the park. 20W on CW isn't bad, although nobody will QSO with me at 6 or 7 wpm. Essentially, I'd just be doing it for "show". And, as long I'd just be screwing around, why couldn't I do two-metre CW? I could string up a 1/4-wave dipole for two metres on that tripod, and draw a big crowd of arrogant 'superiors' telling me that I'm doing it wrong.
It also occurs to me that I could take advantage of the event for a little FM experimentation. If I'm at a known location, at a known time, other hams could use their superior power or antennae to reach me on FM simplex. With my limited power and my Technician licence, there's not much that I can do there that a dozen other people will be doing a dozen times better. I have a 1.25M Yagi, but I don't have the portable power to run my TYT TH-9000. Maybe I could use my 5W HT and try some 1.25M FM simplex. There are enough people in the metro with 1.25M FM HTs or mobiles that it might be interesting for everyone involved to put those to the test in a scheduled situation.
Spring is the time for hams to repair or upgrade their antennae, so why not have some crazy dude like me out in a park giving signal reports? It beats being ignored by CW snobs on HF as I pound away on a straight key for an hour or two.
As long as CW operators ignore the letters "QRS", I will continue to ignore their dead language.
Maybe there's some kind of "joint effort" possible with another ham in terms of gear to make this a better situation. Either way, I should be looking at some kind of schedule so that people will know which band I'll be on at which time.
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