2004 ARRL Field Day
07/02/2004 |
N2N
Operated in a 31' RV in the middle of nowhere in NNY...true portable operation!! It went well, with the obvious pluses and minuses. We had Stan, N2RMZ on SSB and myself, Kevin, WA2ISC and Rick KD2A on CW. See group picture here: http://www.qrz.com/n2n
We had 300 QSO's in the first three hours and sat on 14.037 the whole time without moving and got a lot of reports that we were the loudest on the band. We were able to run 600w out on 20-15-10 but the hitch came when we went below 20.
We were running a 160m Carolina Windom and had an unbelievable time trying to get the ropes up in the trees. We started trying to throw the ropes at 8:30 Saturday morning and didn't get the antenna up until 5:00 pm that afternoon. Along the way we had to go to the auto parts store to buy a replacement air compressor for the air cannon we were using to throw the lines over the trees. Then we lost the projectile we were shooting with the air cannon after the leader string snapped. Scratching our heads for what to use next as a projectile we started going through my extended length sockets, and lost two of those the same way until we finally got the line over the tree.
As you can imagine, by the time we finally got the antenna up we were beat, and Kevin and I only worked about 60 stations each. The lions share of the work was done by KD2A and N2RMZ who were kicking butt working about 2 qso per minute as long as we were on high power.
Because we had trouble with the antenna it was hanging a lot lower than it should and we could not get it to take anything more than 200w which seriously cut in to the ability to hold the freq. Once this was the case we went into the search and pounce mode and ran about another 250 qso on 40-80.
All in all we completed about 758 qso about evenly split between SSB and CW, so we had a lot of fun regardless of all of the challenges.
I don't know how many other 1A were running in NNY. But we did not have any other bonus points other than emergency power and so forth. Don't really care that much as far as the standings are concerned although it will be interesting to see them when published just to see who else was out there at the time.
'73
Brian, K2BJ (N2N FD) -- K2BJ
We had 300 QSO's in the first three hours and sat on 14.037 the whole time without moving and got a lot of reports that we were the loudest on the band. We were able to run 600w out on 20-15-10 but the hitch came when we went below 20.
We were running a 160m Carolina Windom and had an unbelievable time trying to get the ropes up in the trees. We started trying to throw the ropes at 8:30 Saturday morning and didn't get the antenna up until 5:00 pm that afternoon. Along the way we had to go to the auto parts store to buy a replacement air compressor for the air cannon we were using to throw the lines over the trees. Then we lost the projectile we were shooting with the air cannon after the leader string snapped. Scratching our heads for what to use next as a projectile we started going through my extended length sockets, and lost two of those the same way until we finally got the line over the tree.
As you can imagine, by the time we finally got the antenna up we were beat, and Kevin and I only worked about 60 stations each. The lions share of the work was done by KD2A and N2RMZ who were kicking butt working about 2 qso per minute as long as we were on high power.
Because we had trouble with the antenna it was hanging a lot lower than it should and we could not get it to take anything more than 200w which seriously cut in to the ability to hold the freq. Once this was the case we went into the search and pounce mode and ran about another 250 qso on 40-80.
All in all we completed about 758 qso about evenly split between SSB and CW, so we had a lot of fun regardless of all of the challenges.
I don't know how many other 1A were running in NNY. But we did not have any other bonus points other than emergency power and so forth. Don't really care that much as far as the standings are concerned although it will be interesting to see them when published just to see who else was out there at the time.
'73
Brian, K2BJ (N2N FD) -- K2BJ
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