And now for the crème de le crème...  The show with everything AND Yul Brynner...  I take you now to ancient Egypt:

PHARAOH (The Yul Brynner tie in): Okay, Moses!  Enough, already!  Your people can go!

MOSES (Played by Charlton Heston, of course): What finally convinced you?  The frogs?  The locusts?  The first born sons?

PHARAOH: No, no...  We could deal with all that, though I'm still finding frogs in places I'd rather not talk about.  Frankly, I'm amazed at the tight spaces a frog can get into.  No, Moses, it was the Monkeys.

MOSES:  The monkeys?

PHARAOH:  Yes, the Monkeys.  Cripes, everywhere I tune this thing I hear, "CQ Contest from N9UHF!"  They're ubiquitous!  They're everywhere!!!

While those of you who have seen the Ten Commandments may have trouble recalling that particular scene, there was a guy on 6 meters that remembered it when he said, "Those guys from N9UHF are ubiquitous!  They're everywhere!"

The Stoned Monkeys N9UHF contesters were out in force at the Pioneer Tree Farm for the ARRL VHF QSO Party, and so were the mosquitoes (talk about a plague of biblical proportions!).  In a contest where one could work comfortably from an indoor permanent station, the Monkeys were out in the middle of a field someplace - and once again your humble servant was there.  I will say that the mosquitoes were the only thing to complain about, though.  The weather was great and the food excellent, though to my wife's relief I still haven't sampled the concoction known as "Guadeloupe Chili."

I don't know that words can adequately describe this, but I know a bunch of people took pictures so they should be floating around soon.  At any rate, picture this: three or four comfortable chairs lined up in a row made up what I call "the living room" for operators to take breaks.  The four operating positions were set up on tables around that.  Well, four and a half, really - at 222 MHz there was a place to slide in someone to operate 1296 or 902 MHz.  It was a heck of a setup - even when you took a siesta to eat donuts, or to take pictures of the resident cop taking a siesta to eat donuts, you were still in the thick of the action.

Of course, that's not to say there weren't issues here and there.  One of our operators, who shall remain nameless, was a bit late on Saturday morning after Burger King's breakfast menu worked its magic.  Then, perhaps in retaliation for Tom "Yeah, I've Got a Transverter For That" K9TMS accepting that thank you note on Golden Calf stationery (addressed to "You Darned Dirty Apes"), the antenna rotator gods were not pleased.  I was trying to work a station to the southwest when Tom said, "Chris, what are you doing?  That's NORTH west!"  Well, it seems that a faulty pot in the rotator control had taken a dump and the antenna wasn't pointed where the control said it was pointed.  That was about the time that the power meter on 2 meters melted.  Yes, that's right - melted.  Apparently the 500W power rating of those el cheapo watt meters is somewhat optimistic.

Now we cut to Jason listening intently to work a station on 6 meters.  It's hard to copy, but SOMETHING is out there for sure...  Yes, there's a callsign - someone's calling CQ!  Here it is, faint and hard to copy, but it sounds like...  There's a Uniform...  Hotel...  and...  What the foxtrot???  That's us!  At some point in the early evening, something went awry with the 222 and/or 6m setup, so every time I pushed the voice keyer on 222 the 6m op would hear it.  Tom and Terry K9HA couldn't figure out how in the hotel that happened.  It didn't seem to matter much, since I hadn't worked anyone on sideband, other than stations that 2m and 6m had told me to look for.  Lest you think I was completely useless, I did get some contacts on 223.500 FM, some of them thanks to listening to N9AKR, who could have been operating from inside my head for as loud as he was; and I got the ball rolling with WB8BZK/R to get him on the other bands after he moved to EN62.  (As a side note: though N9AKR called CQ an awful lot on the calling frequency, he always extended the courtesy of letting me work another station when I asked to get in instead of continuing to call CQ right on top of me.)

 

	And here we have Tom/K9TMS... Notice the mascot just hanging around in the background.  Shortly after this picture was taken, the bull whip came out and the mascot was lashed for putting the microphone down for a siesta that would later include donuts and Mountain Dew.
	After deciding to drop his Burger King endorsement after a very unfriendly encounter, he has decided to start endorsing the Pepsico Company, and their highly caffeinated product, Mountain Dew, enjoyed by contesters worldwide.
	Here, Jason is quietly saluting the contest Fuehrer... See? It says it right on his headphones!
	Little does our 6m operator know, but the monkey sitting on the fan actually plans on attacking him to take over the station.  Those Damned Monkeys have been known to take over the stations from time to time, I'm told.
	"Wait...what's that I'm hearing on 223.500?  That voice...it sounds high pitched, whiny, and extremely annoying.  Don't tell me Glenna got her ham radio license!!!!"
	Little does our 6m operator know, but the monkey sitting on the fan actually plans on attacking him to take over the station.  Those Damned Monkeys have been known to take over the stations from time to time, I'm told...