[amsat-bb] Field Day Kudos

[Stephan Greene]

I handled satellite ops for K4LRG (Loudoun Amateur Radio Group, LARG).
Nice hilltop location at Franklin Park in Purcelville VA,excellent coverage
to the south and east, decent to the west, and some trees to the north.
1st QSO was VE3YRA on 1st Ukube-1 pass, last a Brazil station on AO-7 just
before 1800 UTC.  About 135 QSOs before I remove AMSAT dupes.  This is
about double what we did last year; very happy about it.  I'd like to give
kudos to folks who stood out in my mind over the weekend:

- The ops at W5RRR (JSC club).  QSOs on 7 birds, CAS-4A @ 1539 6/24 UTC was
VERY SPECIAL.  A young man who is very interested in ham radio at the
mike.  You were his 1st satellite QSO, and he was double excited when I
told him where you were.  You made this kid's day!  Thank you sirs.

- K4BFT and VE3YRA - you guys were everywhere with solid signals.  We
worked BFT on 11 satellites (missed AO-7) and YRA on 10 (missed AO-7,
AO-73).  We worked several other stations with great signals on multiple
satellite, these 2 stood out in my mind.

- N8HM.  Paul, how you do it with 2 817s (fully manual) and hand-held
antenna continues to amaze.  Thanks for the QSOs.

- The ops on an early Sunday FM satellite pass (I forget which one).  You
were remarkably disciplined, even by FD standards.

- The many ops who stayed with us to complete a QSO despite QRM, low
elevation angles, jumpy AO-73 transponder, or insufficient caffeine in me
on Sunday morning.  My apologies to anyone I stepped on or became "that op."

- Customer support at Yaesu in California.  Murphy struck on Thursday; I
broke a cross boom U-bolt on my rotator while getting ready.  I called
Yaesu; their customer service rep checked with their technician and they
shipped a replacement to me.  Which arrived Saturday! (I was worried it
would not arrive in time and found a substitute locally that worked OK for
FD).  Excellent customer service.

The number of satellites this year made for interesting times when one pass
started while another was underway.  We had QSOs on every CW/SSB or
FM-capable satellite except AO-7 Mode A and AO-92.  Weather was very wet
(rained all day Friday and showers on Saturday) and a severe t-storm 1 hr
after shutdown on Sunday (2 shelters damaged but no injuries thankfully!).
All the satellite QSOs and Sunday gorgeous sunrise and morning made up for
it.  I still need to get digital modes working (can copy NO-84 and FS-3 but
don't have uplink working) and build an L-band antenna for AO-92.  And not
wait until early June 2019 to get started!

73 de KS1G (K4LRG op)