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For Nude Recreation Week, 1999, the Naturist Amateur Radio Club assembled a complete Amateur (Ham) Radio station including state of the art transceivers and antennas, and talked with nearly 600 other Hams throughout the world.
Star Ranch in McDade, TX hosted the club station this year, including use of a 60' trailer and ample room to erect antennas. The board of directors assisted with the location, manpower to help erect the 40 foot tall tower with 30' beam, and waved the ground fees for all the operators for the entire week.
After spending a full day assembling two large antennas as well as the tower, the Naturist Amateur Radio Club, call sign NU5DE, started operations on July 5th. Immediate results were seen by the large numbers of Hams across the USA and Europe calling our station. Information for our "Special Event" station was printed in the July issues of various Amateur Radio Magazines worldwide. We were also listed on several web sites as well as Internet bulletin boards.
The extensive antennas allowed us to contact a greater number of hams from Star Ranch than ever before for Nude Recreation Week. Stations were contacted from all areas of the world, but most were from the US. Many contacts asked for additional information about the Nudist/Naturist lifestyle and information from our portable operation from Star Ranch. Some wanted to know if we had "slow scan TV" running. This would of given operators a "visual" description of our operation. We were not equipped for that this time.
The day started about 9 am after a hearty breakfast in the "Nakid Café", on the grounds of Star Ranch. Contacts would continue on and off all day and well into the night, with final contacts being made as late as 2 AM Texas time. Many Europeans were just waking up to chat with us on the radio before their drive to work, being about 8 am there. Many of the contacts were with other amateur radio operators that we had contacted years before, as this was the 6th year in a row to operate portable from a nudist location in the Austin, Texas area.
After 7 days on the air, the last station was contacted in New England and the equipment was disconnected and the antennas taken down. Nearly every state was contacted including Alaska and Hawaii. The amateur radio operator heading up this special event was Bob Redoutey, N5KF. Other operators included Ben Thornton, WD5HLS and technical help from Steve Bosbach, KG5BR. A total of 572 stations were contacted from Start Ranch. After the Star Ranch station was de-activated, Jim Campbell, WB6ZPB, operated as NU5DE from the San Diego, CA area and made a total of 11 contacts in 7 states. The combined total number of contacts for 1999 was 583.
Special certificates have been printed, each one personalized with the contacted station's call sign, and date and time of conversation. Many of these certificates will be found hanging on the walls of operators "shacks" throughout out the world. So far, 176 certificates have been mailed.
Plans are to continue this special event again next July during Nude Recreation Week. Look for the Naturist Amateur Radio Club's call sign NU5DE on the air again in July, 2000, or during many other times through out the year from Nudist conventions through out the USA, as well as during many varied Amateur Radio Events during the year.
The Naturist Amateur Radio Club can be contacted at PO Box 200812, Austin, TX 78720. Email address is nu5de@usa.net. Look for our station near 14.265 MHz on the Amateur Radio 20 meter band. Membership in the club is free to anybody that has an amateur license world wide.