Field Day 2008

Lake Effect station KD8DKU will be on the air for FD 2008.  Find us via the ARRL event locator:

http://tinyurl.com/5bkhzp 

We're the event near Harvey.

Field day is a national emergency communications test dressed up as a contest.  It's purpose is to get as many American amateur radio operators as possible on the air using only portable equipment and simple antennas to show themselves and show the public that when all other communication methods fail, amateur radio will still be there.  Amateur radio is licensed as a public service.  Part of our service commitment is to be ready and able to help in times of crisis.  Field Day is a demonstration and test of that readiness.

Ops Schedule:

You're invited!  Hams of all license classes and any/no club affiliation are welcome to vist, work a few contacts and pick up some current ARRL info.

Talk-in: 146.97 (no tone)

Cell phone: 906 869-6621 Call during the event to request a direct contact attempt!

30 June 2008 – Field Day Edition

Field Day 2008 – That’s a Wrap! Nothing ever works out exactly the way we expect, but FD2008 sure had it’s shares of odds and ends to deal with.  Weather was the first issue – we moved the event to the HQ QTH due to predictions of bad weather.  We did get rained on pretty hard, and we were obliged to shut down three times Saturday afternoon as thunderstorms rolled through the area and static crashes broke up more than one qso as time went along.  Saturday night was cut short due competition with Gypsy Moth caterpillars and Junebugs (inside the tent!).  I couldn’t find anything in the FD rules about bonus points for coping with bugs!  Finally, we had some visitor traffic and I took the opportunity to twist some arms about the hobby and hand out the really super Yes, We Do That brochure from ARRL.

All in all, KD8DKU gave a creditable performance.  85 QSO’s in 23 states/3 provinces spread over 20m, 15m and 10m with about 6 actual operating hours.  Usual event rigging – exhibit shelter, Cushcraft R-5 vertical on a 10’ pole, Kenwood TS-570Dg, powered by a deep-cycle battery with generator available.  That’s the generator with the white cover behind the tree.  There’s an extension cord on the drive to the right of the tent – that powered only the desk lamp.

Unlike past years, there were actually holes in the bands but stations felt obliged to cram in around one another so there wasn’t much relief from QRM on 20.  There were bigger holes on 15 and 10 but stations still tended to clump up.  We were 1 Bravo this year – couldn’t get enough ops to move up to Alpha class.  Most startling QSO was with W3AO – I worked them on 20 and 10, and they were 23 Alpha – that is, 23 simultaneously operating transmitters!  I have a pretty good imagination, and I can’t feature how that  plays out.  I suppose with extreme notch filtering you could run CW, PSK SSB on most bands and you could throw in SSTV and multiple VHF/UHF bands and so on, but, man!, that’s a lot of ambition!

Unusual pattern to the states worked:

where the yellow squiggles show successful contacts.  It’s usual to work the south from HQ but New England was all over the bands.  Could not score California, and I ran into many situations were I heard two distinct stations calling CQ on the same frequency.  They could not hear each other.  This occasionally led stations who were calling one or the other CQ station who could hear each other to just agree to screw them both and score contacts with each other on the side.  I got to like that approach!  The monkey-in-the-middle situation also demonstrates the early life of ARRL as a service organization!

As usual, all practice pays off, and we report these observations:

• 80 is less than 100.  That is, I started out at 80 watts (to conserve battery) and found out I consistently made more contacts running 100 watts.
• 20 was open well past midnight Saturday, and 15 and 10 were productive much later than expected.  I suspect this proves that the bands sound dead mostly because nobody’s out there trying!  That’s a hint, by the way….
• It is possible for one person to put up the exhibit shelter.  Trick is to get it elevated, then to get under the scissor-struts and push them UP rather than try to pull the legs OUT.
• Battery lasted the entire event at full power – as was the design in selecting that particular battery.
• For demo purposes, I fired up the generator (a cheap, non-inverter model) and, holding my breath, plugged a 12v power supply into it and ran the rig for a few minutes.  Rig ran fine, although the generator clearly needs more RF shielding – I could hear the spark plug hash.
• Strong CQ stations were consistently harder to contact than weaker ones.  Strong stations attract a lot of attention, cause deeper pileups.  Barefoot stations did not attract as much attention, took a little more operator skill to hear, and were easier to get.
• Really exercised the DSP (digital signal processing) and IF (intermediate frequency) shift features of the rig to dig stations out of the noise and QRM.  Very cool – I had not realized, for instance, that the DSP controls were separate from the Noise Reduction controls.  Reading the manual really helped on this score.
• Delta-class stations (home stations running commercial power) tended to show up predominantly Sunday afternoon after all the big guns had worn themselves out.
• I found myself hearing qso’s fly over me – coast to coast, for instance – that I couldn’t make contact with.  These higher bands are beam dominated – I had to conclude that in a lot of cases I was off the side or even off the back of  beam antennas and they just were not going to hear me.  Ugh.
• Being an Extra paid off – there were several CQ stations in the band slices reserved for extra-class operators, and made for good, easy contacts.

So, I’m going to give us a Success! Sticker for this year.  How about you? What did you do for FD 2008?  Reports and comments sought, eh?