Uploaded July 2022 | Updated September 2026, 40 seconds ago
This is my 'documentary' video of the Raleigh Amateur Radio Society 1990 Field Day operation at Camp Butner, a few miles north of Raleigh. Bob Keys NA4G was Field Day chair that year (Bob became a Silent Key in January 2022). There are actually three separate operations: A QRP/Battery group, a QRO group, and a 'Novice/Tech' station (before the ARRL came up with the GOTA station idea). Note that logging and dupe checking was all on paper. Well, almost - I see one vintage laptop in there running DOS.
If you're a RARS member, or more likely in the RARS diaspora, you might recognize some of the many hams who appear in the video. Only a few are still in the club, and like Bob, more than a few have passed away. Some of the younger ones are now middle aged or even senior citizens! I was club President in '98/'99, but I have moved away and only visit now and then.
About the video: I had just moved to Raleigh in January 1990 to start a new job with a video editing company. My ham activity had been fairly fallow during the 80's, but I was jumping back in with the RARS club. I shot the video on my 8mm consumer video camera, and edited it on 3/4" video at my new company. I made a bunch of VHS copies for club members. This video comes from one of those VHS copies. Even if I had the 3/4" master, I'd be hard pressed to find anyone with a playback deck to copy it from (at least not without spending a lot of money). So the quality of the video was never that great. As it was, I had to dust off a VHS deck from my shelves and hope it worked, and the tape would play as I digitized it. Fortunately, everything worked as smoothly as it had before I 'decommissioned' my own 'antique' video hardware.
Interesting to note that while consumer VHS and 8mm video cameras had been available for about a decade at this point, they weren't exactly common. And editing capability for consumers was rudimentary at best. I was using the company's 'low-end' edit room, where I usually did pre-edits to send on to the main edit room. This project was finished in that low-end room. I could do rudimentary titles, but I couldn't do dissolves or other transitions, so it's all 'cuts'.
73, Gary K4AAQ (formerly KN4AQ)
This is my 'documentary' video of the Raleigh Amateur Radio Society 1990 Field Day operation at Camp Butner, a few miles north of Raleigh. Bob Keys NA4G was Field Day chair that year (Bob became a Silent Key in January 2022). There are actually three separate operations: A QRP/Battery group, a QRO group, and a 'Novice/Tech' station (before the ARRL came up with the GOTA station idea). Note that logging and dupe checking was all on paper. Well, almost - I see one vintage laptop in there running DOS.
If you're a RARS member, or more likely in the RARS diaspora, you might recognize some of the many hams who appear in the video. Only a few are still in the club, and like Bob, more than a few have passed away. Some of the younger ones are now middle aged or even senior citizens! I was club President in '98/'99, but I have moved away and only visit now and then.
About the video: I had just moved to Raleigh in January 1990 to start a new job with a video editing company. My ham activity had been fairly fallow during the 80's, but I was jumping back in with the RARS club. I shot the video on my 8mm consumer video camera, and edited it on 3/4" video at my new company. I made a bunch of VHS copies for club members. This video comes from one of those VHS copies. Even if I had the 3/4" master, I'd be hard pressed to find anyone with a playback deck to copy it from (at least not without spending a lot of money). So the quality of the video was never that great. As it was, I had to dust off a VHS deck from my shelves and hope it worked, and the tape would play as I digitized it. Fortunately, everything worked as smoothly as it had before I 'decommissioned' my own 'antique' video hardware.
Interesting to note that while consumer VHS and 8mm video cameras had been available for about a decade at this point, they weren't exactly common. And editing capability for consumers was rudimentary at best. I was using the company's 'low-end' edit room, where I usually did pre-edits to send on to the main edit room. This project was finished in that low-end room. I could do rudimentary titles, but I couldn't do dissolves or other transitions, so it's all 'cuts'.
73, Gary K4AAQ (formerly KN4AQ)
