QRP Afield, Chowdercon: yep, a great weekend

 

 

Sending out a CQ AF during QRP Afield. Lots of open-air, on-air fun, nice chats with passers-by, and two tasty seafood meals.

 

QRP Afield on Sept. 18 was primo — great weather, reasonable band conditions, and good times with a half dozen or so fellow hams from the New England QRP Club.

We shared Four Tree Island with picnicking families, a few overfed, underworked sea gulls, and one bashful woodchuck. And we shared chatter over a lunch of chowder and lobster rolls and later seafood dinners. That’s the Chowdercon part. The fifth annual, to be exact, organized by Carl Achin, WA1ZCQ.

A quick note about my CW station that day: I used a Yaesu FT-817 with a NEQRP NEScaf filter sitting on top of it. I operated off the battery pack I threw together a couple of months ago. And yes, they are the same batteries — now up to about 18 hours of operation. The larger of the two plastic containers holds a larger, 7 Ah battery I brought because I though I’d run my smaller pack dry before the event was over. Didn’t happen.

I ran the rig through a ZM-2 tuner (quite popular among the assembled NEQRPers, it seems) and into a Pac 12 portable vertical.

You never know what you’re going to see at these events.

The island, basically a town park nestled up against the south bank of the Piscataqua River at Portland, N.H., connects via a causeway to a larger island. I’m still not sure why, but the parking lot attendants on the larger island — big burly guys in shorts, t-shirts, hiking boots, and chapeau of choice, also were wearing rainbow-hued fairy wings. They looked none too happy about it.

One member of the NEQRP Club arrived in the afternoon for some operating — in a camo kilt. The kilt was his response to an email from another club member at the site earlier in the day remarking that the QRPers were the only normally attired folks in the area.

Seeing is believing:

 

Aye, laddie, that's nae a tartan I'm familiar with! (Photo courtesy of Bud Valcourt, NY1Z)

 

We did get some operating in during all of this. I swapped howdies with stations in Finland, Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, Missouri, Minnesota, and in several New England states.

And if you didn’t cotton to operating, shipping and boat traffic up and down the Piscataqua, along with other diversions, provided some relief.

 

The tanker 'Ocean Chariot' heads back to sea

 

 

Fishing fleet hanging out

 

 

Ketchup and mustard parked outside the chowder and sandwich shop where we chowdered down

 

 

Three of our merry band at the sandwich and chowder eatery: (left to right) Tom Horan, N1HNE, Carl Achin, WA1ZCQ, and Chuck Ludinsky, K1CL

 

 

While some of us shuffled off to lunch, Bud Valcourt, NY1Z helped hold down the fort on Four Tree.

 

Up here in New England we have four seasons. So I’m wondering: If Chowdercon is the (end of) summer gig, should we be thinking of Cidercon, Maplecon, and, what, Cabbagecon (hey, it’s an spring crop)? On second thought, Cabbagecon might be the hardest one to pitch to the members — unless they like kimchi.

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