The Gun Counter

I'll be on 40 and 80m as part of the evening crew for our local radio club. Some FT8 will be in there as well, but I really want to work on handling voice traffic.

I also hope the early morning crew get plenty of calls. Dead air at 0400 has to suck.

Have fun!

Don't know if I'll go out this year or not. My closest club isn't doing anything and the other club is a bit of a drive at $5/gallon.

Club #2 has set up down to a science. They will be using club owned radios (IC-7300s) and have the antenna set up mapped out and know where everything goes.

Which kind of takes the fun out of it for me. I enjoyed showing up not knowing what gear we were going to have and then figure out how to get it
all put together and on the air by 2PM L Saturday.

The times I've done the night shift, the problem wasn't so much dead air as finding stations you hadn't worked yet. But you would occasionally get a new one popping up (somebody had to get up for a bathroom break and decided to jump on a radio instead going back to sleep) or as conditions change stations you could barley hear before are now workable.

When all else fails, you can always call CQ

Good luck, and again, have fun!

I'll be running one of the club's 7300s, mostly because I'm still working on a battery system and solar power unit for my 7100. And then there's the antenna choices for a field setup...