Well, I posted on this a while back and also posted on the tractorbynet forum and got some good advice and ended up going ahead and doing the pad site on my own. I also talked with a local concrete worker and ran my plan by him and he said that's how he would do it.In retrospect I only saved about $400 doing it on my own, but I think I ended up with some good experience and went out and bought $325 worth of tools to reward myself! ;-) I hired a college kid to help me and was VERY impressed with his work ethic. It really was refreshing to see a hard worker who showed up early and stayed late instead of all the bad things you hear about kids today. I rented a tool called a jumping jack or whacker packer that is gas powered and jumps up and down with a flat shoe and really packs the dirt down well. It puts out 3,000 psi of pressure. I had the college kid run the jumping jack while I drove the tractor! ;-) I ended up doing 4 layers and packed them down with the tractor and then the jumping jack between each layer. I ended up having to wet down the dirt before packing down each layer also. The best method seemed to be leveling out the dirt with the tractor, spraying it down really good with the hose, getting a big scoop of dirt in the bucket and driving back and forth over the site, then running over it a couple times with the jumping jack. Then repeating. Here is the before picture: 
And here is the after picture: 
One more after picture:  There are a couple more pictures in the same directory if you want to check out some of the progress pics I'll include them in a link below.
Overall it was a lot of work. Took about 20 hours but it does give you satisfaction to get something done like that. Thanks again for all the input. Nathan
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