Amateur Radio Club of Alameda

Kudos go to Bruce Gillis, KI6CYT, for this year's effort pulling together the K6QLF Field Day. ARCA had a full house at the Fire Department Training Facility, and propagation was hot. So there were a lot of contacts resulting in ARCA racking up more points than any Field Day since 2005. All the action was at 5 watts and on emergency power.

32 people participated, including Alameda Mayor Trish Spencer and the ARRL's Jim Latham, AF6AQ. The most contacts were on CW and PSK31, which did about equally well. But the SSB folks put in a strong performance at 5 watts, boosting the total substantially.

Setup began at 8:00 am, and operating started at 11:00 am sharp. With a break for pizza, the action continued until dinner time. All stations ran on 12V batteries. Additionally Jerry Juhala, KT6CRT, put together his solar power rig outside the building - one of two demonstating how to sustain activity on emergency power.

The antennas included Al Sweet's (KG6HM) G5RV in the parking lot, Bruce's 40m vertical next to the Red Cross building and my 20 meter antenna on the Training building.

Howard Harawitz, WA6YAG, in what is becoming a Field Day tradition, shot some great photos of the morning activities (available here). I took afternoon pictures, including those of the Mayor's visit (available here - also including Jerry's picture of Jim Latham).