06/27/2005 | W9EMA SGC Style Field Day

If it wasnt for the SGC antenna coupler, I probably would have a hard time getting on the air from my antenna restricted QTH. John, W9WY and I have been amazed by the versatility and performance of this antenna coupler (which mounts at the antenna) and have joked around about doing a field day with SGC fed antennas. We finally decided to turn this joking into reality by starting to plan a SGC Field Day back in April. There were many different antenna possibilities but we finally decided on delta loop from a QST article on the SGC website due to the fact it required no radials. After getting some people onboard to operate at field day, we decided to add a second station and a second delta loop. We modeled the antennas in EZNEC and had a pretty good idea of what to expect from them. In previous years, we used the WR9R Field Day logging software, but it was starting to get out of date. We found a program by N3FJP that looked promising and decided to register the networked version of it so we can have two terminals in real time.

It took about an hour and half to get the antenna wires into the tree(s) with a slingshot with much needed help from Rick, WB9VRG, and Ken, KB9NSD. On Saturday, we started setup at 11:00 a.m. and it took us about one and half hours to get the antennas, radios, and logging computers setup. When Field Day did start, it was obvious that the phone and cw stations were going to interfere with each other due to their proximity. Unfortunately, we did not have any options available to move the delta loop farther away. At the suggestion of our cw op, Tom, WA8FIB, we went back to his QTH and grabbed a 20m trap-less vertical that he had in his backyard and wire for three radials. We had the new antenna up and running in less than 20 minutes with it being fed by the SGC coupler. The interference on adjacent bands disappeared and interference was at a minimum when both stations were on the same band. We also found the vertical worked with no problem on 10 to 80 meters. I also used it to get on the Indiana Traffic Net with no problem to send our section manager a message, which at times can be a difficult task being in the extreme northwest part of the state.

Conditions for the most part of field day were not so good. There were storms north of us that were creating noise problems at times, thus we did not make a lot of contacts on 80 meters. However, around 9 a.m. on Sunday, conditions started improving and it was like fishing in a pay lake for contacts. With the delta, we were busting pile ups on the first call on 20m and 40m. We had a small glitch with the logging software not spotting the dupes correctly, but later found we were forgetting to press tab after entering a callsign. We never had any problems with the two terminals being networked together.

This year, we did well with bonus points. We were able to claim 100% emergency power, media publicity, public location, public information table, NTS message to section manager, W1AW field day bulletin, Non Traditional Mode demonstration, site visitation by agency representative, web submission, and youth participation. Unfortunately, our battery that was being charged with a solar panel, never got charged enough to make any contacts, so we were unable to claim credit.
All in all, most everyone had a good time; we tired something different, ate hot dogs and hamburgers and learned a few things. -- K9MQ