Field Day Preparations

Was going to get started yesterday on Saturday, but I had a breakfast meeting with my club, and then I finished installing all the software on the PC I use to run my FlexRadio 5000A. The motherboard in that PC had been giving me random BSOD's, even from when it was new. It finally bit the dust early last week and wouldn't boot up at all. I ordered a new motherboard for it a couple of weeks ago, and installed it last Saturday. I left the Windows 7 installation alone, and while it worked OK, I just get all queasy inside running a new motherboard with the previous installation of Windoze. I think Windows has gotten much better in that respect, as I've done the same to to Vista installations, and after spending 20 minutes or so sorting itself out, they booted up and ran fine. Still, I prefer a clean installation when making a major hardware change.
SO......Spent some time cleaning up the garage this morning (ALWAYS a losing battle here at Casa de Radio!), and getting things rounded up (a.k.a. "One Big Pile") to make sure I have all the bits and pieces to put the portable satellite station back together.
The first thing I did after that was crank up my little Honda EU2000i generator, which hasn't been run in almost a year. I always put StaBil in the fuel, but it still took about 10 pulls to get it running, and it wasn't too happy at first. It took longer on the choke to keep running, and surged badly for about the first ten minutes of running. I ran it about 30 minutes with a 1000 Watt load, and shut it down to cool. Now it starts on the first pull, like a good little Honda should.
I really like this generator; it has an "Economy Mode" that conserves fuel, and with the light loading on it at Field Day, it will run a good 8~9 hours on one tank (1.1 gallons) of gas. Plus it's really quiet compared to some of the cheaper gensets on the market that use "lawnmower" engines. I've had people ask me if it was running, because the noise it makes was drowned out by the Coleman, Sears, and Harbor Freight generators!
Anyway.....back to work rounding up my stuff. I suppose if I did The Big Push I could get things running today, but I'd rather take the time to *make sure* all my gear is in good shape, and ready to go.
And I still haven't got the trailer licensed. That's on my To Do list for this week!