Well, field day 2011 was almost a total bust out here. Was plagued with one problem after another. The kenwood TS-440sat died on me, once again, and had nothing but "dots" on every band. The Electrical system in the van couldnt handle the power being drawn, so had to run with the motor on, causing exhaust fumes to fill the van. At least, until we ran it out of gas. That knocked me down to one transmitter, instead of the three I had planned on using. Then the R5 and 2M beam mast fell over, bending the R5 radials a bit, and knocking out any chance of doing any 2m simplex work. By the time I finally got going, and resolved most of the issues i was having with the setup, it was 10PM. I did manage to pound out abt 100 contacts, before coming down with a cold bug, that wiped me out, and I finally had to call it a day around midnight.
All in all, it was a good test of our emergency preparedness, and we will now know what works, and what doesn't out here. I definitely need to beef up the electrical system in the van, or find a generator on the cheap that I can use. Also need to either resolve the issues with the Kenwood TS-440, or just toss it and get another radio that I can use for CW. This is another field day for the books, and gives us a closer look at what we need to resolve, if an emergency situation was to emerge.
