Islands QSO Party and Picnic

by Bob Hensey, K4VBM

NFARL members and guests gathered at Lake Lanier's Mary Alice Island on August 24th to compete in the US Islands QSO Party and celebrate summer with a club picnic.

The day started out in a gorgeous fashion.

The early birds set up the stations, the beam, dipole and several canopies. Another canopy was set up over the picnic table for all the goodies. The US Islands and US flag were added and proudly waved in the breeze.

Early on QSOs were coming in nicely with some nice rotation between SSB, CW, and digital.

VBM arrived with the goodies, and everyone helped get them moved to the operating site under the table canopy. The grill was fired up. Edith Collins and then Wayne Garber turned out some really tasty hamburgers, brats, and hot dogs that were consumed with gusto.

The day really warmed up, and the ice cold drinks were a nice relief.

Don Deal brought his new tripod, mast, and Buddipole system along with his radio equipment, and managed to make a few CW QSOs using the new set-up.

Clyde McClain set-up his radio and Buddipole, and managed to make a contact on 15m.

Daryl Young and Johnny Kludt brought their hand-held satellite equipment, and tried a pass around 11 am.

Unfortunately, mid-afternoon a storm front approached so we put a tarp over the food table, packed up the radios and moved to the vehicles to ride it out.

There was some lightning and booming thunder, and it really poured at first, and then some really severe winds came through knocking down the canopies and the beam. The wind was so strong that it tipped over some of the park's 55 gallon trash cans! After a while the rain backed off to a drizzle, so folks started venturing out from vehicles to assess the damage. All the 3 beam elements were severely bent when they hit the ground. The two radio canopy frames were broken and unusable. The fiberglass mast with the flags had split and bent and was basically ruined. The canvas came off the goodie table canopy but the tarp covering goodies on the table remained, held by the weight of the coolers.

The dipole was still up, so once the drizzle stopped the radios were set up on a picnic table and we were back in action making Island QSOs. K4VBM just about lost his voice calling CQ on SSB, but snagged a few contacts for the club on 40m.

Terry Joyner, Mike Riley, Wayne Garber and Clyde McClain added more contacts for Jim Paine to log. There was some on and off drizzle for awhile, but after the storm it was much cooler and many folks came out to the park to enjoy the day after the storm.

While we were operating, Mike Riley and a team moved most of the unusable equipment and stuff to the vehicles. We continued to watch the weather around us and later in the evening another strong cell appeared to be heading our way. We decided to tear down and call it a day. Just in time too as we barely had enough time to get everything packed and tied down before the next round of bad weather hit.

All in all, everyone who came had a great time, and I know over 100 QSOs were made as NF4GA in the Island QSO party. We will have to wait and see if it was good enough for a high place in the contest.

Thanks to Terry Joyner and Jim Paine for handling the stations, and thanks to everyone that came and braved the weather. Fun was had, and even though some equipment was damaged, the ham spirit was clearly evident throughout the day.