NFARL members and guests gathered at Lake Lanier's West Island on August 25th to compete in the US Islands W/VE QSO Party and celebrate summer with a club picnic.

Turnout was great, contest results were good, food was copious and great, and the venue was outstanding. I had a great time and heard lots of comments about repeating the event in 2019 at West Island. Hope it will happen!

Terry K4YBV and Mark KJ4YM both went the extra mile to make the event successful. Thanks to both.

Terry got the ball rolling by suggesting that the club participate in the W/VE QSO Party, reserving the shelter on West Island, promoting it with members, organizing stations and operators and stepping in at the 11th hour when our list of contacts was a bit light and bagging ~40 Qs in the last hour. His station captains lined up a full cadre of operators that kept the contacts flowing all day; Terry organized the 20m & 40m phone stations, Jim W4QO organized the CW station, and Jim N4SEC organized the digital station.

Mark expanded the event's scope into a full blown picnic that sent everyone who joined us home filled to the brim with his great food. I know Mark slept well the night after the picnic - I thought he was never going to stop making trips from his car up the hill to the picnic shelter with food, drinks, coolers, ice, cookies, and consumables. Mark and grilling assistant John Norris N4IHV kept the food flowing until everybody was filled.

The additional folks who joined us because of the picnic gave us lots of opportunities to visit with club members we don't see enough of and learn more about their recent activities. It also provided opportunities to continue the "Very Bad Memory" FT8 tutorial that Bob Hensey K4VBM started at our August meeting; Bob and John K4SQC hovered around Jim N4SEC's QSO Party digital station and ably fielded questions from Jim and his kibitzers. As we were cleaning up, Jim N4SEC commented that he learned lots of new FT8 tricks from Bob and John.

Thanks again to Terry and Mark for making the Islands QSO Party and Picnic an event to remember!