“A Day Of Radio” – Hanging With The Guys Up On The Great Hill

I judge all of my activities using roller skating as a barometer. As a long long long time roller skater, one of the things I like best about the skate community is its consistency. Skaters gotta skate as they say. The rinks have set hours for “adult nights” where we all show up and roll around. Week after week after week. For decades. It is as consistent as breathing and sleeping. It never matters when exactly you arrive, when exactly you leave, or if you miss a night or two. There is no one to check in with and your friends will be there, if not this night, then the next. Skaters gotta skate.

So, when I took up the amateur radio hobby in the beginning of 2019, I expected (like I eluded to above, with my insular thinking I fundamentally believe every activity should flow like a roller rink), that a group of extremely enthusiastic, consistent, RF-obsessed people would mash up every week or two without fail and play some serious hardcore radio together. The truth is, while I deeply love the people I have met in my various radio clubs and pursuits, I have not been particularly satisfied with the “playing radio” part. There just hasn’t been enough of it and while I love organizing events, I only know what I know. Meaning I have not had a lot of time with the true gurus who are going to push the limits of my radio knowledge.

But, I think I finally found my oasis…

In a locals-only, hillside town park overlooking the Beantown skyline across the Boston Harbor, i.e. Great Hill Park of Weymouth MA, a group of amateur radio operators have decided to meet up and play radio together one Saturday each month. The Great Hill Gang, as they are now known, was born out of the lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic, heralding their birthdate as ARRL Field Day 2020. They have never missed a month since.

I have been hearing about the Great Hill Gang, and their increasingly well-known monthly meetups for quite some time on the Monday evening nets on the Boston Amateur Radio Club repeater 145.23. In fact, I had also been listening to various folks talk about participating in the Great Hill Gang 2M SSB net that also occurs on Monday night. Well, a couple of Mondays ago I decided to pull out my Yaesu FT-857D and see if I could make it into the 7pm net. Not wanting to fuss too much with antennas, and hoping for a horizontal polarization, I figured, why not try my 40M OCF antenna and see if I could contact them on that. Low and behold, I did! Not very well, but I did! We’ll come back to my choice of antennas later…

Well, this particular contact led to a semi-personalized invitation to come up and join the gang on Great Hill. This, along with some operating time at the amazing K1USN club house for Veteran’s Day (where I met some of the Great Hill Gang regulars) opened the door for me to participate. Not that I or anyone needs a special invitation to hang out with this very welcoming group of hams, but it still put me at ease. So, this past Saturday, AA1F and I gathered our radio gear and made our way up the hill…

We found a spot to tuck Limey (my van) in to between the other radio vehicles. Everyone was set up around the backside of a roundabout. Mike K1UVH, and to the best of my knowledge, the organizer of the Great Hill Gang, welcomed us immediately. In fact, almost like pieces of a puzzle, a lot of the callsigns I’d regularly hear over the air were now matching with faces. It will take me a bit of time to figure out and keep track of who’s who, but I am well on my way! I’ll come back to it, but I set up a fiberglass mast on my tow hook (see the post about it here and an updated version here.) That’s me with the Yaesu FT-857D (again) and Bioenno 15ah LiFePo4 battery for a 6M and 2M operation.

RF was flying everywhere! Wire antennas, verticals, handitalkies, and multiple HF radios were arranged under Mike K1UVH’s tents.

The thing you understand immediately about the Great Hill Gang is that they love radio. That’s Nellie below checking out the scene from the back of Limey.

This is Scot N1JSM. Turns out not only is he a ham, he is also a competitive roller skater! And a van lover! Small world! We had met for the first time at K1USN’s Veteran’s Day special event station, where it turns out he also knows where to find delicious quesadillas! That is an Icom IC-7300 that he has specially mounted on to a tripod below. Across the pavement, AA1F has set up his trusty 20M EFHW in the trees. We should probably set up a mast for him next time, because he spent a lot of the morning sitting by himself near that guardrail hunting POTA stations. In total he chased down approximately 20 portable operators.

Even the flag pole, which sadly lacked a flag, was utilized for an endfed antenna.

As a little aside, while I was at K1USN for Veteran’s Day, Mike NA1XX, another founding member of the Great Hill Gang and participant in the 2M SSB net brought by a “junk antenna” for me. He had picked out all of these pieces (to include a broomstick and a bamboo shoot) from the dumpster of a local yacht club, built himself a 2M double bazooka dipole, and now saw that he could give his creation to a good home. That good home being a particular ham that thought it was a good idea to try to make the 2M SSB net by radiating through a 40M OCF at her QTH, i.e., me. I was touched! And I brought it by to the Great Hill to put it on the air along with my 6M 4-element beam by Arrow Antenna.

Sure enough, sitting about 25 feet in the air on top of my fiberglass mast, the junk antenna registered an SWR of under 1.5 to 1 across the entire 2M band. I quickly made two 2M contacts, the furthest in Watertown 15 to 20 miles away. Next, we pointed the 6M beam north and I reached Archie N1PGF from Chichester NH, about 75 miles away as the crow flies on side band. He asked me to try him on 2M, but we could not connect. Thanks for the fun 6M qso Archie!

And then, as if this wonderful day wasn’t already enough, Jim KC1MJB had taken my woes with my trailer hitch mast holder as a challenge to design his own. He fabricated this beauty to be used with the military masts. I plan on testing it out at next month’s Great Hill Gang meetup. Thanks Jim!

Below you can see AA1F shooting the breeze with a local ham radio celebrity (at least in my opinion), Peter KC1HHO, who we routinely listen to officiating the 2M traffic net on Monday nights. That is Mike K1UVH’s ham radio trailer. There was even a steady stream of coffee and homemade cupcakes for the taking!

The Great Hill Gang and their Day of Radio are a blast! All of the Boston area radiophiles should take a trip up the hill to hang out with this great group. The pure enthusiasm for the RF arts is obvious. The atmospheric is festive, friendly, and engaging. New and experienced hams alike would be welcomed with open arms. I expect they will be stuck with me for quite some time…just like the rinks, if they tell me when to show up, I will!

Best,

KM1NDY