In a few words, it was fun, but it wasn’t what we expected. The weather cooperated in that it didn’t rain, and it wasn’t terribly cold or damp. No sun either. Our station worked quite well. Our first contact was a Canadian station, the second in Ohio, and the third in Germany, all on 20m. We were on the primary US Islands calling frequency, 14.260, but the only other Island-related station was one of the USI founders, K3USI down in Virginia. All told, we made six contacts during the four or so hours we spent on the island. Not a very active group, apparently.
It was a warm one today and unfortunately the warmer weather brings out the mosquitoes. Dave WA1ZCN, Alan AE1H, and myself W1SKE are working hard to get the trailer all wired up for NEAR-Fest in a week. The day is half over and there's still a lot more work to be done.
The annual walk around Lake Fairlee, beginning and ending at the Post Mills Congregational Church, was a wet event this year. No, no one fell in the lake but we had a steady drizzle all day. Approximately 30 walkers turned out and all were prepared with appropriate rain gear and a determination to make this another successful walk for hunger.
We provided both security support and communications for the walk. On Saturday, we set up the net control station and the APRS digi at the church and did a quick checkout by driving the course. The laptop I had planned to use on the APRS setup had a problem, but we used APRS.fi to check the performance and we had good coverage around the route.
As of today, total donations stand at $2,469,000 - with more yet to come in. If cancer could be defeated by the sheer spirit and determination of all those involved, we wouldn't have to do this again next year. The weekend's events were successful by all measures, and everyone who participated on the communications team contributed greatly to making the 30th Prouty a safe and fun event for all participants. The weather was perfect, our systems kept running, and we made better use of APRS tracking than ever before.