ARRL Field Day - This weekend

[FlatTop]

So my field day plans are boofed...what are you all going to be doing?  

I may have some time late Saturday to setup on the back pasture and run some FD CW....but that's about it. 

 

 

[WRXB215]

I plan on being at Bayland Park. Hope the mosquitos aren't as bad as they were last time I was there.

[SteveShannon]

Our ham radio club will be providing communications for a bike race called Race Around The Pintler in One Day, RATPOD for short, which raises money for Camp Make A Dream. 
We’ll travel along the course with mobile and handheld radios making sure the racers are safe. By afternoon most of the racers are exhausted. 
https://www.campdream.org/events/ratpod/

[WRYZ926]

My club is setting up our emergency coms trailer in a local park for this weekend.

[wayoverthere]

Current plan is operating solo a bit Saturday night to avoid the heat.  Recently picked up an Ultimax wire antenna (and the necessary tuner) and looking forward to testing that out.

Club wise...I can't find much. One local club is providing support for the Climb to Kaiser race, while the other, I only found references to a field day setup, but nothing public....the closest event listed with ARRL is 2ish hours away

[tweiss3]

I'm helping set up for our club, but that is it, I have 8 other things scheduled this weekend, that I'm going to be elsewhere before operating even begins.

[Davichko5650]

17 hours ago, JoCoBrian said:

So my field day plans are boofed...what are you all going to be doing?  

I may have some time late Saturday to setup on the back pasture and run some FD CW....but that's about it. 

 

 

MIne got messed with a house fulla out of towner's, might have an hour or two only to run out to our club site, but otherwise, spare moments to try some 1-D at home...

[WRQC527]

Our group is doing an overnight setup at a campground here in SoCal. We're not trying to compete, we just want to get out and operate off the grid. Last year we actually made it into QST magazine. 

[Davichko5650]

1 hour ago, WRQC527 said:

Our group is doing an overnight setup at a campground here in SoCal. We're not trying to compete, we just want to get out and operate off the grid. Last year we actually made it into QST magazine. 

Very nice!  One club I'm in will be at their usual spot, a private airport and they run the full 24 hours, beams and dipoles and EFHW's galore, all modes. The other club I'm in does a City Park and they have to set up and tear down both days as the park is closed overnight!.  Both pretty good groups, But if I get any time away to visit, it'll be at the airport - better food, and cold adult beverages allowed...

[DONE]

Wasn't paying attention to the fact it was getting close.  Had planned on getting a couple antenna's up.  Too hot to climb the tower at this point. 

I might operate some tomorrow and Sunday, but with the heat that's forecast, I don't know I will be spending a lot of time on the air.

 

[WQAI363]

I started going to Field Day with the Holmesburg Amateur Radlo Club K3FI nearly 20 years ago. Of course, I've several Field Days with Penn Wireless Association W3SK. For a while I haven't felt like doing anything in Amateur Radio. A lot of great friends of mine, both Amateur Radio Operators and non-hams have passed away. I realize I shouldn't allow myself to fall into a depression, but sometimes a break is necessary in order re-spark the interest to a hobby, whether it's in radio or model railroading.

73 to all! 

[FlatTop]

22 hours ago, Adamdaj said:

I started going to Field Day with the Holmesburg Amateur Radlo Club K3FI nearly 20 years ago. Of course, I've several Field Days with Penn Wireless Association W3SK. For a while I haven't felt like doing anything in Amateur Radio. A lot of great friends of mine, both Amateur Radio Operators and non-hams have passed away. I realize I shouldn't allow myself to fall into a depression, but sometimes a break is necessary in order re-spark the interest to a hobby, whether it's in radio or model railroading.

73 to all! 

Adam I was looking at a group photo from a Field Day in 2000..I was only 40 then....in the group of 11 there are four of us left.  It brings back a lot of good memories, but it's also a bit depressing.  We met at Caesar Creek State Park in Ohio for 6 or 7 years in a row....some great times, and great memories.  Flying Pigs QRP Club International was the group.  We ran QRP CW for the entire Field Day.  So much fun it should have been illegal. 

 

[WSAH999]

I unfortunately don't have an HF transceiver but I did run my SDR with a homemade inverted V dipole wire antenna and was able to pick up California/Mexico very easily. (Am in Michigan) and I just had the wire elevated about 10 feet. It was more of a proof of concept as I am surrounded by trees so I wanted to check for future use. I heard mainly 20m, 17m and 15m.

Was going to go to our local clubs field day, unfortunately it seems to have been rained it, but that's alright. All in all not bad. Hopefully by next year's field day I'll have a HF rig.

[wayoverthere]

In terms of after-action, i'll say there's room for improvement.  wasn't going for points, so i was doing some hunt and pounce between 20m and 40m, around 0700-0900 UTC.  For some reason I decided to play on high difficulty, and on top of the compromised antenna (end fed wire, sloping from 7ft up to around 20 ft roughly east/west), I was running QRP phone.

In retrospect, I should have either taken the effort to set up the interface box and computer for FT8, dragged out the 100 watt radio, or both. I heard club stations as far away as Indiana, Kansas, and Central FL, but nobody could hear me, apparently.

[marcspaz]

It's tough doing QRP during some of these QRM contests.  Even with 500w+, it can be difficult to get through the noise of 1kc of separation.  Field Day is no exception.

 

For the past 2 years I have skipped all contesting for health reasons and the fact that it has been close to 100 degrees two Field Days in a row.  Normally, I bring out a portable shelter, solar and batteries, and I will string up a dipole between two 35' masts.  Same thing on Winter Field Day.  It's always fun, but its a lot of work to setup and tear down.

[WRQI663]

I was really on the ball......I thought it was the last weekend of June and missed it entirely - but I am prepared this week with logging software and all set up for....

Next year

If I'm still here.

[tweiss3]

I did help setup. When I left, all the antennas were up, and all but 1 had the final run of coax connected to their radio. I did make a time lapse of the antenna erection, but I haven't had a chance to review it yet, I did get uploaded/backed up to the gopro server, just waiting on me I guess......

Boy was it a hot weekend.

[WRXB215]

6 minutes ago, tweiss3 said:

Boy was it a hot weekend.

And the humidity was through the roof early when we started putting up antennas. We were all drenched is sweat by the time we were done. As the sun burned off the excess humidity and the breeze started, it got much more comfortable. Still hot but bearable.

[FlatTop]

8 hours ago, marcspaz said:

It's tough doing QRP during some of these QRM contests.  Even with 500w+, it can be difficult to get through the noise of 1kc of separation.  Field Day is no exception.

QRP does add an interesting twist to things....what we learned in doing QRP CW for 5 or 6 years in row was this.  Between 11PM and 6AM...it seemed like all the groups put their rookie CW ops on the air, and man if they could hear you a little bit, they worked you.  We made 65-70% of our contacts from about 3-4 hours after FD started until the next day when it ended.  At the beginning everyone is working the loudest low hanging fruit...at 30-40 WPM in many cases....that's when we'd start our fire and cook our dinner.  Hahaha. 

We'd also run a 6m SSB station (MFJ something or other rig) that was low power, and it did a good job contacting FD stations within 75-200 miles. 

[FlatTop]

41 minutes ago, WRQI663 said:

I was really on the ball......I thought it was the last weekend of June and missed it entirely - but I am prepared this week with logging software and all set up for....

Next year

If I'm still here.

Always the fourth full weekend of June. 

[wayoverthere]

On 6/23/2024 at 10:03 PM, marcspaz said:

It's tough doing QRP during some of these QRM contests.  Even with 500w+, it can be difficult to get through the noise of 1kc of separation.  Field Day is no exception.

 

For the past 2 years I have skipped all contesting for health reasons and the fact that it has been close to 100 degrees two Field Days in a row.  Normally, I bring out a portable shelter, solar and batteries, and I will string up a dipole between two 35' masts.  Same thing on Winter Field Day.  It's always fun, but its a lot of work to setup and tear down.

I was hoping late night would make it a little easier to get through (and there seemed to be some gaps to get into), but I think I just piled too many compromises together to be very effective. 

On the upside, running between midnight and 2am PDT meant lower temps...it was more like high 70's instead of the 107/108 highs we saw Saturday and Sunday...when I went to pick up food Sunday afternoon, the display in the truck read 135F.