Sept. 11, Fly-In Breakfast Recap
We had a good time this year at the PAOP Fly-In Breakfast. Glen WA3LAB brought his remote radio using a Kenwood TS 480 interfaced with his cell phone. On the table he unpacked his TS 480 control head and wireless interface to his phone. His home set up has a similar interface box to his TS 480 transceiver. He demonstrated this ability to a few hams who were also pilots about how this actually works – really cool stuff! We could talk from Glen’s home station to our club station. No need for a radio check ever! Our club station is an Icom 718, manual antenna tuner, power supply powered by commercial power (we had a generator but it wasn’t needed this year). The antenna was new for this year, a G5RV mini, 51’ overall length. It was up at about 25 feet. It covers 40 thru 6 meters with a tuner. We made contacts as far away Nebraska, and mobiles and base stations in Texas and as far south as Florida.
We had about the same amount of adult visitors as in past years. This year we only had three kids come by. My target is to always try to offer that same spark about radio as most of us had as a kid. Pretty hard to do with todays high tech communications. We all should try to keep up with our hobby’s newest technology! We might very well get a new person to visit one of our upcoming meetings.
This year the fly in had WWII fighters flying in formation and low flybys! I can not thank all who came enough to help set up, tear down and operate. Also, we thank Tim W3UE for the invite to operate a demo station. Airplane and helicopter rides were really inexpensive. Don’t miss it next year! It is a wonderful community event with displays of beautiful airplanes (historic and vintage), experimental craft, classic cars, trucks, and motorcycles. New kit planes built by hand were also on site. As I say every year, you will appreciate the exquisite craftsmen ship of these airplanes. It is must see event!
73 de Ed N3WXW for PAARC