Field Day 1977

It was Summer 1977. I had my Novice ticket since May of 1976. This was my first Field Day.

It was on McMillian Island on Lake Osborne, just south of West Palm Beach, Florida. the call was W4HAW. "CQ Field Day from Double-you Four Hams Are Wonderful" was our mantra!

To get on the island, you had to take a boat. Lake Osborne was really just a body of water that was part of the inter coastal waterway in between the mainland and outer barrier islands to the Atlantic Ocean. Talk about fertile RF grounding!

Take a look at that picture on the right, that's me sitting down! I went into the Navy three months later.

Take a look at the number of hams participating, 50! What a group. If I remember, we were 5A, I think. I had a pup tent and camp stove, it was at least 100 degrees, mosquitoes that would carry you away. Back then, there was no GOTA, but a novice station that used the same call as the host group. Only Novice class operators could setup and run it, and of course, it was CW only.

What great memories. It was the same today as you could operate in the phone band as a novice with a control operator. What a thrill. If I remember correctly, the rig in front of me in the picture was a Kenwood TS-520, and I was being shown how to tune it up before transmitting! Tune up, what is that!?! Back then Kenwood was the top rig among the common ham population. There was Collins and Drake, of course, but that was the equivalent of having a IC-7800 or Yaesu FT-9000 today. The Kenwood TS520 was a workhorse. Much like the IC-746, FT-990, or TS-570 is today.

My most memorable Field Day was in 1980 the summer before I was to get out of the Navy. It was in the Santa Rosa Amateur Radio club in Milton, FL. I was FD chairman (at 22 years old) in charge of all these old timers! It was held at Blackwater State Park in Santa Rosa county, FL. I remember it because I designed and built a mono band 10 meter 3 element yagi that we put up for FD that year. I wasn't knowledgeable about sunspots back then, but it must have been the peak, because 10 meters opened up for Field Day and remained open THE ENTIRE TIME, including in the wee hours of the night and morning. The run never stopped, not even at 2 o'clock in the morning. What a rush!

Gosh, that was 30 years ago this year! boy has allot changed. By the way, I got that newspaper article from my mother. Who else but your mother would save something like this. I have another picture from that 1977 FD of a picture of me putting up an antenna in another newspaper. Funny thing in 2006, the local newspaper here published a picture of me doing THE SAME THING at age 48.

The more things change, the more they stay the same!

Till later W4MY