So this was my first Amateur Radio Field Day in years. I got there around 11AM and stayed until about 5:30PM. I couldn’t get there for the test session at 8AM though – I’m told there was only one person who took the test.
Here’s the setup:
That was the 6m band setup. I was somewhat chagrined that there was no CW work this time round. Perhaps next year I sort of prefer Morse Code for contest work. And a decent set of headphones. That’s a must for CW.
Got to be the person responsible for logging 20m band contacts. Then I got to work 40m phone. And being 40m requires a general or above – I was good with my extra class license.
I did get to show I was an amateur radio dinosaur though – and instructing in the fine art of noise reduction using the old Squelch control and then the Noise Reduction button on the Kenwood TS-2000. DSP noise reduction is interesting. I do like the radio though and may purchase on in the future.
And as is the case with lots of things, even with food being there we only got about a dozen or so people there today. Even got to experience drift in phonetics – with a Mike/Mario swap. Didn’t say anything though just chalk it up to personal flair I guess.
Got to see the rooftop setup for PEMA – all I can say is first they’ve got a decent set of antennas and the grounding system for lightning arresting is awesome.
Did see some old friends – there’s Brian K1PVD who I know from my years at the Attorney General’s office – he was doing IT for the RI State Police. Then Mike N1BEE .
Spewing Truth in the face of Lies 
I hope it was rewarding not withstanding .
Yes in fact it was.
The TS-2000 is a nice transceiver. I’ve had one since 2013. If you’re interested in one keep an eye on QRZ. They turn up now and then used in the $700 – $800 range. the only issue I ever had with it was the buttons were too small for my big, stubby fingers and sometimes I resorted to using the end of a pencil to push ’em. Still have mine, but it’s my backup unit now and usually only gets used for monitoring signal quality when I’m testing other equipment. The newly introduced Kenwood TS-890 looks really nice, but I suspect that’s going to be $4,000+ It looks like a smaller version of the TS-990.
Yeah the stacking of functions on the buttons was a bit perplexing at first.
It is a bit bewildering. My manual is very well used, I’m afraid. Even more well used is the manual for the 990. I’ve been using that for almost as long as the 2000 and I’m still digging through it to try to figure out why it doesn’t do what I want it to do.