07/12/2004 | N9TTX N9TTX Field Day 2004

Two "veterans", two "newbies", part-time ops/coaches, four portable towers, scrounged coax, a good generator, lots of aluminum, wire, and steel, and plenty of enthusiasm makes for a successful Field Dayand the weather wasn't bad either!

The N9TTX setup crew consisting of Myself (N9TTX), Darrell (K9AIH - ex KB9LVK), and Christian (KC9FVT) arrived at the field at 6 am Saturday and proceeded to assemble the yagis and to erect the towers. Everything went together well, and while Darrell and I were getting the third tower in the air, Chris went to get Mary (KC9FVS) to help put up the portable carport op-station. Once everything was in the air, and guyed down (including the carport), we did an on-air test with the local church (the owners of the field we were using), to make sure we had no public address system interference. The test went well, with no interference across any of the bands (160 meters through 1296 Mhz minus the 902 Mhz band) we were running.

Darrell and I had participated in Field Days before, while Chris and Mary had never done so before, so we were not sure how smooth things were going to go. The planning and on-site organization helped, as we got on the air between 18:00 and 18:30 hours.

The stations consisted of a Yaesu FT-101ZD, a Kenwood TS-2000, and an Icom 730 for multi-band HF. We had a Ranger 2950DX and small amp for a dedicated 10-meter station. The power supply for the amp could only deliver enough juice to drive it to just shy of 150 watts...which was OK as this kept us in the low power class.

The VHF station consisted of a Yaesu FT-736R for the 144, 222, 432, and 1296 Mhz bands. We also ran a Ranger 5054DX for the 50 Mhz band.

For HF work, the antennas the "farm" consisted of an A-3, an A-4S for triband work. An Antron-99 for the 10 meter station, homebrew 160-meter dipole and vertical antennas, a homebrew 40-meter dipole, and a G5RV.

For VHF, the antennas consisted of homebrew for 50 and 144 Mhz (3 and 14 element respectively), a 25 element K1FO on 432, a 10 element Doppler antenna on 222, and a 35 element M2 antenna on 1296.

I had to run and get the RCI-2950DX (I left it on the table at home), while Steve sat at the site for license class availability. The Field Day shirts came in, and we donned the gear and looked the part for the weekend. All in all, everything seemed to work well, and no other problems were had...other than a few antennas being too close to one another, hence bleedthrough onto the other stations at our site.

Mary was a bit gun shy at first, but Steve (KA9OMY) had stopped up and coached her on what to listen for, and gave her tips on contacting. Afterward, she was jumping into any chair available to make contacts after she got used to operating.

Justin (K9MU) stopped out for a bit of part time work, and "made an opening" on 10 meters. He had a QSO rate of 300 Q's an hour on SSB at one point in time...ouch!

Darrell was pulling in stations on the TS-2000 that the other rigs could not hear. Chris was constantly battling the 10 meter and 20 meter signals blasting through his headphones while he was running the Icom on 15, so he played solitaire for a bit on his computer as well as running around being our photographer with the digital camera.

I ran the low bands on the 101ZD, as well as code on all bands. When Justin came out with his Icom 746 and ran code and phone on the HF bands while I switched to one of the VHF stations and ran that, which worked out well, as six opened up during this time.

Darrell and I worked around the clock, while Chris and Mary left in the early morning hours. Both of them came back on Sunday morning and we finished the day out. Randy (KB9POI) also came out and did some contesting Sunday also. It only started raining right at contest end, so we sat in the carport and talked about the contest until it stopped.

While teardown was happening, the sky cleared, and we had another very nice day...unfortunately we all were tired, so after the homesteads were reached we all slept. We learned a lot, made more contacts than the previous year, had a more organized setup, and we had fun. And that is all that really counts isn't it? See you all next year.


Operators and Helpers:

Dave N9TTX,
Darrell K9AIH,
Chris KC9FVT,
Mary KC9FVS,
Justin K9MU,
Randy KB9POI,
Steve KA9OMC,

See you on the bands. DaveN9TTX -- N9TTX