Well, the year is now half over and our July meeting is coming up in a few days. I can only give you a few comments about our big event last month, Field Day. More precisely, the TDXS/NARS Field Day held on the west side of Houston. We started setup on the traditional Friday, with a lot more people than we had at Surfside last year. But most of them were NARS members with the TDXS members in the minority. Things went well for setup, the 400 pound tent went up without too much trouble but it takes at least ten people to lift it off the ground to put the legs on it, hi. Then you do the same to the other side, just more fun, but it was a nice place to setup the stations under. The only real problem we had was station/band interaction since the towers were with in about 300 feet of each other. The band filters at the HF stations were designed to do other things so more work for next year could help.

The SSB station was hosted by Keith NM5G, who was also in charge of the FD for NARS. Keith had a nice radio setup and I got to operate it during the second time slot. There were twelve two hour time slots to cover the SSB station. The CW station had a similar setup but not sure if possibly one slot was not taken. I remember that the total Q's for SSB were about 1175 but after dups were removed, the count came down to about 1100. Likewise with the CW station, the count at the end of the FD was about 888 but it came down with dups.

I also got to operate the six meter VHF station a few times. We finally had a few openings just about sundown and I had a Cuban station call me for a contact. At the time I did not think to call him back with my own call so I could log it for an all time new one on six meters for me. But I did not think about it until it was too late. Tom - KD5EIJ was a fine cook for the event. Tom cooked all night Friday and Saturday until we had a fine BBQ meal with all the extras for dinner. All the stations kept operating while we ate and it was excellent BBQ.

The GOTA station was in a 5th wheel RV and they used the K5DX callsign for this station. The control operator was Paul Owen, N5NXS, an extra class during the entire weekend so we had no problems. The GOTA had about 175 contacts during the event. I know several of the kids were having a good Elmer session when I visited them during the last ten minutes of FD, just before we turned everything off".

Dave W5BXX had his motor home setup on the west side of the FD site. The tower mounted on his RV was used by the SSB station setup under the tent but we did not put an operating position in the RV like in previous years. The RV was used for logistical purposes. Thanks Dave. Congrats to Dave for his award that he received at the Dayton convention!

The meeting this month will go over a lot more details about Field Day by Paul W5PF who was the TDXS FD coordinator person. So many thanks to Paul for all the work he did at FD. Other than Dave, and myself, TDXS members attending who are not also NARS members were Steve, W9DX, Don, N5DD and Amy, KC5DJI. I wish we would have had a better turnout with the people that did not go to the Nevada TDXS FD get together. I expect someone will write about the Nevada FD in this issue and my thanks to Tom K5RC for hosting that event.

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