May 13 µField Day

Another special edition of µField Day is coming with the Ventura County Amateur Radio Club, at their wonderful home digs at the Dudley House in Ventura. It was a fantastic location last year, with plenty of room plus all mod cons like restrooms and a kitchen. Lots of trees for antennas, lots of really great people. And this year is special. VCARC is holding a VE session at the same location just before µFD, so all those new hams and new upgrades will be able to step right out the door and get on the air! The club is also firing up the barbecue on the site, so bring your own food and have it cooked up in style. As always, everyone is welcome…come rub elbows with hams from all over the county.

This will be May 13th from 1100 to 1500. The VE session is going on earlier, so being there a bit early to have your stuff set up won’t be a problem. At the last event, we had some testing of solar controllers going on, and confirmed that the West Mountain controllers are well behaved in a crowd and safe for use at the ARRL Field Day next month (good to know.) These smaller events are a perfect place to experiment and try things out, not to mention stay familiar with your portable setups. But even if you don’t plan on bringing a radio, be sure to be there. It’s always fun. We’ve been averaging 30 people or more and 8-10 HF setups every month. It’s impressive to see how many hams can set up an HF station with very little effort, and there are plenty of ideas to borrow everywhere.

Dudley House is at 197 N. Ashwood Avenue, on the SW corner of Ashwood and Loma Vista. 34.277357, -119.240017. What3words plank.tiling.future (If you haven’t tried what3words, or haven’t in a while, try it. It navigates using Google maps and you don’t need to remember long GPS coordinates. And now, the phone apps work even without internet connections. Good stuff.)

Keith Elliott-W6KME

keith@w6kme.org