07/01/2003 | NT5NT This past weekend was Field Day, our annual emergency preparedness field exercise. The club did quite. We operated for 24 hours. Setup was 3 hours with a 1 hour lunch before 1pm. Teardown was 1.5 hours.

The following NT5NT members participated in this year's Field Day.
K5PSK, AA5AM, KD5WJS, WW2R, KC5PDC, AG5CQ, N5PYK

There were several visitors who stopped by including members of the RWK and NTMS. Even our section manager stopped by to say hi.

This years contest, as typical, was dominated by the HF activity. However, solar conditions were not especially favorable for the upper HF bands. 10 meters yielded no contacts this year and most of the work was performed on 20m and 40m. Toward the end of the contest, non duplicate contacts were getting harder to make.

A special treat this year was some decent conditions on VHF and UHF. The six meter band opened up to the west to Az, Ca, Nv, Ut, and Co Saturday evening followed by strong tropo up to Ks, Ar, and Mo on 2m and 70cm. A few token microwave contacts were made during the contest to locals.

All in attendance really liked the parking garage approach.

We set up in the Galatyn A parking garage in Richardson. The operating position was on level three, generator on level one, and antennas on the top level 5. Antennas used included a 40/80/160 dipole (AA5AM), the club's G5RV, plus a 6, 2, and 70cm beam (AA5AM) with rotator. Radios at the contest were the club's TS-2000X, K5PSK's TS-2000, and N5PYK's FT-847. Additional microwave contacts were made by transverters from N5PYK and WW2R. One 802.11 contact on 2.4 GHz was completed between K5PSK and N5PYK.

Computers for logging were provided by K5PSK and N5PYK -- N5PYK