Just to let everyone know that I haven't forgotten about this upcoming
event. This one is fairly important, and represents a rare opportunity
(other than possibly Armed Forces Day) to interact with other military
communicators both past and present. This would be an valuable
opportunity to publicize our club and our upcoming events (including the
possible museum exhibit next year). At the risk of sounding morbid,
this may also be one of the last few chances for such interaction,
considering that many such communicators are not going to be with us for
much longer. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the last USAF QSO
Party.
Colonel Bernie Skoch, N5XS, is very enthusiastic about our desire to
operate in this contest as we would represent one of the more important
participants (representing the legacy of SAC communications). Check out
the SACMARC Home Page for more information:
http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/sacmarc/
It appears that the most likely prospect for us at this point is to
operate at individual members' homes. According to the contest rules,
we can designate a control operator for each station and have that
individual's AF tenure be the point value (e.g., for W0WWH, it would be
AF50).
I've asked around to likely candidates, and the response has been
non-committal (some have been distracted by other important commitments
and have been understandably been unable to commit one way or the other
right now). As of today (August 5th), we don't have any firm
commitments from anyone to host a SACMARC station operation for this
event. If someone wanted to commit right now, they would have first
choice of callsign, and a significant amount of input regarding how the
operation would be conducted, including operating hours (the contest
lasts for 48 hours the weekend right after the 50th Anniversary date,
but the choice of operating hours would be totally at the discretion of
the station hosts).
Ideally, I'd like to see two stations operating, so that we have both
callsigns operating for this historic event. A suggested plan for the
operation would be as follows:
K0AIR - In memory of its high-power operation running MARS
phone-patches, put a good signal on the air from someone with a beam or
at least good dipoles, and possibly an amplifier, and run several bands.
Have a General-class or higher control operator. A high point-value
would be nice (say an AF35 or higher), but then again, Vietnam-era K0AIR
operator Airman "Al" wasn't that high ranking either :-).
K0GRL - In memory of General LeMay, or "Curt" as he was known to many
military amateur radio operators on the bands, put a station on the 10
meter Novice/Tech phone band to hand out high-point contacts to QSO
party participants of modest license class (and likely modest military
rank). We have one or two Tech plus operators in the club with very
high tenure (AF40-AF50) that would make this kind of operation ideal.
This would also be a more practical operation than the K0AIR one, and
could probably be done at a station of modest equipment (including a 10
meter vertical or dipole).
Again, the opportunity for volunteers is wide-open, and the lack of such
volunteers may jeopardize the entire operation. I'd like everyone to
seriously consider this, and try to make a decision one way or the other
by the end of August. I'm sure we will be discussing this further at
the Executive Board meeting (exact date TBA) and at the regular meeting
on September 17th. If it comes down to the fact that there are no
volunteers to carry this one out (and to re-emphasize, right now we have
no volunteers), we may have to come to the conclusion that this
operation is beyond our capabilities at the present time.
73, Paul, K3FU
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