All, Just to continue the good discussion we've been having, here's the thoughts on returning to the American Legion in Rittman. The first interesting thing is that I looked up is the property maps in Wayne Co for the site. The field behind the hall is in in fact owned by the Legion - we've always been under the impression that it was owned by the city and part of Fritz Park. I've attached a map of the approximate area owned by them. The biggest two issues with the Legion hall are the noise level inside and sometimes we've had HF interference on 20m at that location. One possibility is to use the hall itself as "home base" but actually do operating outside. There are several options for that including locating the operators on the gravel behind the hall with longer feedlines - which doesn't really harm HF ops. Or locate them dispersed out throughout the field. Obviously having them together helps with the power situation. Alternatively we could get serious about noise dampening inside the hall. We could construct A frame around the operating stations and rent a bunch of moving blankets to hang from it as sound deadening. We'd also likely need to put a fan in each "booth". Downside of the framing is just like a tent, we'd need to store it somewhere. This would also require some longer feedlines out into the field. From the back door if the hall out into the middle of the field, it's roughly 185ft. So we'd be looking at 225-250 foot coax runs. We could optimize the field layout and keep 10/15 close to the building on shorter runs and put 20/40/80/160 far out in the field. LMR400 is 0.8dB loss per 100ft at 30MHz. LMR600 is 0.4dB / 100 at 30. Pros: * Familiar site * Full kitchen * indoor sleeping/resting * Bathrooms * Water / electricity Cons: * Severe room noise issues must be addressed * Potential for HF interference (field may solve though) Jason
