2002

VE Art Lee, WF6P looks on as Darrell Ross dismantles the HF beam on Sunday morning. Newly licensed Michael Soland, KG6MBU, steadies the ladder.  The satellite station's antennas can be seen in the background.

A little history from this first Field Day, excerpted from our ARRL Field Day Entry submisson.

"Earlier this year, I was invited by the IEEE Student Branch to give a talk on amateur radio.  A few of them were hams, and wanted to hear what I had to say as well as hopefully get others interested in perhaps starting a club on campus.  I delivered a well-received Power Point talk at their February meeting on “The Art and Science of Amateur Radio: A Technical Presentation, Past and Present”.  It was meant to be a brief historical survey of the art and science of non-commercial wireless and radio communications pitched to engineering students.  The students loved it – especially the pictures I included from a 1989 W6YL Field Day when I was at San Jose State University.

Three students later independently got their codeless tech licenses, and I began to hear something I thought I would never hear coming from the IEEE student meeting room: code practice!  I suggested if everyone was really serious about getting into amateur radio and help get it started, the best way was to do Field Day here on campus, get some media exposure and do some PR.  Well, that’s exactly what happened.  Moreover they took it one step further and organized a last-minute VE session on Friday, June 21; Seven people got their licenses while we were out setting up for the contest.  My wife Suellene, now KG6MBT, was among them. 

As control operator, I supervised the HF tent, which was operated almost exclusively by new, I mean really new operators.  Don’t worry, there is certainly no danger in us placing very high in class 1A :)."

-AC6P

Read the full Field Day Submssion (note that some of the web links included are no longer active).