The amateur radio operator disease “hamitis” seems to be increasing its grip on me lately … thanks in large part to eBay and PayPal.
My latest purchases include a nice Icom IC-706 HF/VHF rig in excellent condition and a 1918 Vibroplex Original semi-automatic bug. The bug I won earlier today.
I won't bother fooling around with posting a pic of the IC-706 — they're so common that everyone knows what one looks like. The key is about average and needs some work, but not bad otherwise. I'll post a pic if I can later.
As far as ham radio goes, my club and I are gearing up for Field Day next weekend. I have organized the last two Field Days, but this year I stepped aside. Last year there was a very unfortunate misunderstanding between me and my FD planning efforts and this member. He jumped to a number of very incorrect conclusions, and then during the final pre-FD meeting, he withdraws all of the equipment he announced earlier he was going to provide!
I could tell he was pissed, but I never figured out what was making him so angry at the meeting.
In an effort to help organize our effort, I created and distributed a FD planning sheet at the June meeting. The sheet had a list of things we would need, depending on the number of stations we wanted to run. The goal of making it was to get everyone's participation — it was my wife's idea to make a big list of stuff we might need in order to prompt people to volunteer to bring stuff.
Well, apparently my club cohort took these planning efforts as my dictating what Field Day would be. Admittedly, I have done several Field Days, and I have seen little need for more than 2 stations in our club. We just do not have enough operators to make it necessary. Hell, we don't have enough operators to keep 2 stations busy the entire 24-hour period.
I suggested last year to keep it at 2 stations. This club member, who was already agitated by what he perceived as my “dictator” status, suggested we not limit the number of stations.
I don't know about you, but planning involves knowing ahead of time what resources you need. Waiting until FD setup to figure out how many antennas, etc., you're going to need just sounds disorganized. Call me a dictator, that's fine!
The member got pissed when myself and others didn't take his suggestion of “nine stations” seriously. Who the hell will operate them? This member brought equipment to FD the previous year but left after setting it up. He doesn't operate FD, but wanted to setup equipment, which he did.
We decided to operate 3A, and despite my dictatorial efforts, everyone had a great time. We not only had a good time, but did reasonably well statewide. I was proud of our effort.
Prior to FD, the club member who was pissed wrote me a scathing e-mail. I mean this thing was smoking, it was that fiery. At this point I still didn't understand why he was pissed, nor did I understand why he abruptly withdrew his equipment. The e-mail explained it all.
I can't tell you how surprised I was to find how misinterpreted my efforts had been. I had been filling in for the club president who fell ill, and evidently this club member also had problems with my leadership. He rattled off a laundry list of my faults, warning me that this year's FD would be a disaster.
It wasn't.
Funny story — at FD last year, I had about a dozen people ask me why this member was boycotting FD. The member had claimed the club was ready to mutiny over my “dictatorial” organization of FD, but I didn't see that. All I can tell you is everyone who mentioned it to me did not understand why he acted like an ass at the June meeting and why he withdrew his equipment from our FD effort.
This year I decided to not fool much with Field Day. Despite my love for it, I figured it best to see if anyone was interested in taking a leadership role. It's a lot of work, but a lot of fun.
As it evolved, a committee was formed. The member who bitched so loudly last year did not volunteer during the meeting, though he did privately ask to join.
And as I figured, his stamp is all over this year's Field Day plans. Frankly, there are no real plans. Because no one wants to piss off that member (who was out of town for the June meeting), the committee really did not do much without him. I suggested they plan for how many stations they wanted to set up — there is a practical limit to the number of antennas, etc. There wasn't much interest in doing so. In fact, we probably won't declare a class until Saturday afternoon.
The lack of planning is best illustrated by one of the FD committee members. During the May meeting, Field Day came up. The discussion moved along briskly, and club members began discussing what we might need, who might bring what, etc.
After about 10 minutes of discussion, one of the FD committee members said loudly to the rest of the room, “Hey, shouldn't somebody be writing all this down?”
Yep! Funny stuff.
The FD planning at the last meeting only really resolved food and drinks. As for radios, antenna, etc., we have about 4 people who said “I've got a radio and power supply!” For fear of declaring the dreaded class number, no one actually told anyone “we need X number of stations, so bring yours to FD.” Lots of offers, but no one is committed to bringing theirs, though I suspect at least 2 will.
Now I can get by ok with all of this FD non-planning OK I guess. Its basically going to be “winging it” … the part that really bothers me most is that we are turning back the clock about 20 years — the committee made a conscious decision to go BACK to using paper dupe sheets instead of logging by computer.
This idea (again) goes back to our dear member (the one who won't be operating anyway). The first excuse for using paper logs the committee gave was “because of all the trouble we had last year.”
That was a red herring — there was no trouble last year. Only one of the committee attended last year's FD, and there was no computer problem. The problems came the year before, and that was what this member recalled.
I wanted to suggest the committee reconsider using computer logging, so I approached them about it. Fine, they said, as long as we had a computer for all the stations we planned on running. OK, I asked, how many was that? Well, they just didn't know. There's no limit.
I tried to discuss this, letting them know that deciding the class and planning a maximum number of stations won't limit the number of radios (our member who got pissed last year said he wants everyone with a radio to bring their own radio and operate it from our Field Day). My words fell on mostly deaf ears, particularly since the club member in question wasn't at that meeting either. I told the committee that if they would agree to a set number of stations — like maybe 6 or fewer — we could then try to get enough computers for logging.
No, no, no limit on Field Day.
Frankly, I'm disapointed a bit by the committee. If any of them had ever tried to operate a contest with paper dupe sheets before, they would understand the benefit of computer logging. Mostly it allows the operator and logger to enjoy operating by letting the computer do the work. There's absolutely nothing to be gained by paper dupe sheet logging.
Of course, the two conditions are that the committee is making decisions in deference to the member who got pissed last year, and also none of them have operated a Field Day operation using dupe sheets.
My Elmer was active in the club last year and he was a big part of making our last two FDs a success. Because my Elmer backed me up last year, he also fell from favor of this particular member, who castigated him in that fiery e-mail as well.
I don't know .. maybe I've gotten burned out of putting so much into the club. It really was the effort of about 5 of us (including me and my wife) that really resurrected the club from inactivity. I found a meeting place, I resurrected the newsletter, and I've continued to pay all the costs of sending it. We got the support of a good group of hams. My Tech classes were fairly successful (as you might expect, these newer hams are some of our most active in the club).
My Elmer has all but withdrawn from the club. He quit coming after the time changed last fall (he has an hour's drive to come here), citing the higher cost of driving. I sure miss having an ally in the club.
He won't be coming to Field Day, and I'll miss talking with him. In some ways, I have had thoughts of pulling back from Field Day this year too. Not a protest, but I feel like the committee needs to have to tackle some of the questions they haven't stopped to consider — site security, operator schedules, and more.
I've toyed with the idea of calling my Elmer and asking him to come down to visit us. I really do not want to bail out on Field Day here. It'll be fun, I know. I just don't look forward to paper dupe sheets, and all the joy they bring!
Enough whining and QRM from my QTH.
73 es CUL … de KY4Z … SK …. dit dit …