Author Topic: Field Day 2017  (Read 803 times)

Offline JohnyMac

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Field Day 2017
« on: June 23, 2017, 07:39:13 AM »
This year i will be participating in my clubs amateur radio Field Day from 1400 hrs Saturday June 24th till 1700 hrs Sunday June 25th.

Quote
Since the first ARRL Field Day in 1933, radio amateurs throughout North America have practiced the rapid deployment of radio communications equipment in environments ranging from operations under tents in remote areas to operations inside Emergency Operations Centers (EOCs). Operations using emergency and alternative power sources are highly encouraged, since electricity and other public infrastructures are often among the first to fail during a natural disaster or severe weather.

I and a host of club members launched para-cord line into the tree's Tuesday to pull up an assortment of antennas just before the Saturday event starts. At this count we will have six dipole hoisted and two vertical antenna's for a combination of eight live stations.

My 13-year old neighbor who sports a General license and one of his friends will be manning my Yaesu 817ND QRP and Kenwood 590S radios. We will be working under a pop-up open air tent and staying in two, 2 man tents working shifts through-out the night and early morning.

I will be posting pictures from this years Field Day here, hopefully through-out the day. Please post your Field Day experiences on this subject line. Club call sign is N3SRC.

Meet you on the air....
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Offline JoJo

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Re: Field Day 2017
« Reply #1 on: June 23, 2017, 08:16:00 AM »
 Your neighbor's boy sounds like a fine young man. An all-nighter means a lot of coffee, may I suggest Green Mountain it is loaded with caffeine. :zombitron:
Have fun
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Offline JohnyMac

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Re: Field Day 2017
« Reply #2 on: June 23, 2017, 01:09:43 PM »
LOL JoJo. Yupper, I am bringing my own stash of coffee. I M.A.Y share. ;)
« Last Edit: June 27, 2017, 10:03:28 PM by JohnyMac »
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Offline JohnyMac

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Re: Field Day 2017
« Reply #3 on: June 27, 2017, 10:00:50 PM »
Field Day AAR

Our club’s designation was 5A and our location was EPA (Eastern Pennsylvania).

We met as a group to put up ten messenger lines for the antennas on Tuesday June 20. We launched the lines using the club’s Presidents potato gun. It was a potato gun that had a mortar type shell using pressured air, not a propellant. Sixty pounds seemed to be the perfect pressure for our purpose.

Saturday June 23rd found my team at the field day grounds at 1000 hrs. My team was made up of one 13-year old General License holder and his friend, both boy scouts, and myself. We quickly set up the pop-up gazebo, tents for the night, tables for the radio’s, and last raised our dipole antennas.

The antennas that we chose were a 20m-80m trap dipole (Ran east-west) and my EARC-H     
Endfed 6m-40m QRP (Ran north-south).

Ran an extension cord to one of the two generators the club was using and fired up all three radios we brought. A Kenwood 590S, Yaesu 817ND, and my 13-year old neighbors Swan. Did a few signal reports and viola, we were set-up.
In total, the club had five dipole antenna’s ranging from a flat top long wire, traps and Delta loops. Along with the wires we had two verticals operating too.

In total, we had eight radios on air at one time or another. My neighbor blew a transmitting tube so seven was the final number.

The weather was perfect on Saturday. Blue sky’s in the low seventies but at about 2000 hrs., we did have a brief thunder storm rumble through. No problems as I brought out a tarp to put around the gazebo to protect the radios. Sunday was another perfect day. Blue sky but cooler with a high around 65 degrees.

Saturday, we were assigned the 75/80 meter band. Things were slow until dusk and then things took off. One of my team peeled off to his tent at 2100 hrs. and my 13-year old General stuck it out till 0030 hrs. Sunday morning. I turned off our assigned generator at 0134 hrs. Sunday and hit the sack.

Sunday, I was up about 0600 hrs. using the 817ND with its internal battery not wanting to wake anybody up firing up our generator. Made a few contacts on 20 meters when I heard the other generator fire up so I fired ours up. Made coffee and started to make contacts on 20 meters. This day we made contacts on 15, 20, and 40 meters.

Overall, my three-man team made 221 contacts. One of our radios was designated as the GOTO radio and that radio recorded 27 contacts by non-license holders. We had about 20 folks that stopped by who read our ad in the local fish-wrap paper. We had several visits from local politicians, the fire and police departments, and a neighbor who complained about the generator noise. At this time, I do not have an accurate number of contacts by all seven radios however, I would venture to guess it was in excess of 1,400. That would-be Phone, CW, and digital contacts.

73….
« Last Edit: June 27, 2017, 10:04:31 PM by JohnyMac »
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Offline Kbop

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Re: Field Day 2017
« Reply #4 on: June 28, 2017, 09:20:36 PM »
 :thumbsUp: excellent writeup! :bravo: