07/11/2005 | W0AA W0AA Field Day
June 25-26, 2005


A picture perfect weekend! What a great way to spend a weekend in Minnesota. We barked and pounded out 2 Alpha Minnesota 2,387 times while landing the Qs into the log. This year was better than ever. We had lots of new antennas and a number of new operators on hand. Ford-N0FP once again invited the W0AA (Minnesota Wireless Association) to use his 5 acre farm in central Minnesota as the QTH for W0AA Field Day 2005.

Did I mention the new antennas? In previous years, only wires were used throughout. This year, directional beams were incorporated into the armament on hand to battle the noise and QRM. Two directional vertical arrays were used as well.

Ralph-K0IR brought a trailer load of aluminum, including the famous 2 element 40m beam last used on Heard Island. She was still a bit salty from the rapid retreat from the island, so a good soaking was needed to clean it up. Missing parts were fabricated on-site and assembled using the benefit of a fork-lift to hoist the beam into place. Also included was a new military issue tower that boosted the 3 element 20M monobander to about 50. The tower was still factory sealed in its original carton! What a joy to free this tower from its cardboard casket. The last time this tower saw daylight was 1963! It worked like a champ.

John-NG0R assembled the most interesting array for VHF/UHF. Not many Qs as the weather didnt cooperate. But there was lots of fun putting this baby together.

A new 4 element wL dipole vertical array was also fine tuned for 20M to work in tandem with the 20M beam. With the two antennas mounted at opposite ends of the site, the beam horizontal and the dipole array vertical, we could work SSB and CW on 20M without the need for filters. The polarization and space diversity worked great. On the vertical dipole array, flipping the relay switch from East to West was amazing. The QRM was deep, but flipping that switch made it sound like there were two separate contests runningone on each coast. On 40M, a 3 element triangle array was attempted. I say attempted because final tuning could not be completed before 40M came alive for the contest. Once the station started pounding out Qs on 40M, none of the analyzers would work. Next year we will have it tuned and ready to go. On 80M, the Rohn-20 light duty tower was extended to 67 for use as a full-sized 1/4wL vertical. This, in tandem with the 80M dipole at the other end of the property allowed the ops to work both ends of the 80M band (different modes) without interference.

Yaesu FT1000MP MKV and FT1000D were the radios of choice for the main HF station. Our GOTA used a trusty IC746 using N0FPs call. And John-NG0R put together a last minute effort on VHF/UHF that would make many home stations envious. Once again, a fork lift was used to support the 50, 144, 220, and 432 beams in position. A large collection of radios were used to keep the bands alive.

Kelley-W0RK was our network guru. We were surprised to find that 4 of the 5 computers packed after last FD didnt work. There were busted hard drives, bad serial ports and the like. Kelley had to paste together at least 4 new machines at the last minute to get Writelog to work. What a job! It was nice to have a pro on hand to make it all WK.

Mitch brought his information table again this year, with the addition of a laptop running the ARRL Walter Cronkite video. The local newspaper showed up to cover the event and watched the whole video. To our surprise, we were given 2/3rds of the front page! A great group photo appeared along with a nice synopsis of our FD adventure. Our ATV setup was running on 432, along with a satellite station, and a number of other little details that caught the imagination of the reporter. She was fascinated by all the gadgetry. Frankly, so were we!

The ATV worked like a champ and the SSTV demonstrated some capability that nobody had seen before.

The list of ops included some regulars and a few new (welcomed) faces. Bill-AC0W, Ralph-K0IR, Roger-K0MPH, Tod-K0TO, Mitch-KC0JFY, Paul-KC0HST, Ford-N0FP, Dewey-N0VO, John-NG0R, Kelley-W0RK, and Mark-WA0MHJ all operated the station. Lee-WB0TRA and my neighbor Ricky Osness participated in setup on Friday afternoon. It took a lot of hustle to get that much stuff into the air. These guys were exhausted on Sunday afternoon, but satisfied because they knew the extent of their accomplishment. We landed 2387 QSOs and another 1050 bonus points for a total score of 8660 points. On Sunday, the last guy was loaded and rolling by 4:30PM. The weekend proved to be a great effort that generated some great memories.

Not pictured but manning the night station were Dewey-N0VO, and Paul-KC0HST.

Ford-N0FP -- N0FP