2006 ARRL Field Day
08/08/2006 |
WA4UF
I had originally intended to work Field Day this year portable from someplace up in the Blue Ridge Mountains; the Pisgah Inn even had vacancies that weekend! But alas, my boss would not give me enough time off Friday to make the 10 hour drive, so the decision was taken to head to the old stomping grounds - the inlaws' house in Largo. Built-in babysitting! A huge quilt shop in Dunedin to distract the wife! An airconditioned place to sleep and a covered porch from which to operate if the weather turned nasty, which it did, raining ferociously for some of Saturday afternoon.
The setup was the latest refinement of my portable station: FT-100, MFJ-901 manual tuner, 24' of RS tv mast sections, 4el 2m and 3el 6m homebuilt Yagis, 20m EDZ deployed flattop in the trees at 20'. Power was provided by two 14AH and 1 7AH gelcells pulled from UPSes at work; I used up the little guy and one of the big ones on this first run. I didn't start setting up until after 1800z, which would let me run until 2100z on Sunday. Results: 75m: 1, 40m: 10, 20m: 1, 15m: 2, 6m: 7, 2m: 2 70cm: 0, but not for lack of trying!
Sunday morning I dragged out of bed, took everything down, packed it all up along with a folding chair and tent canopy, and headed for my favorite portable location, Indian Rocks Beach. The setup was the same as above, except the 20m EDZ was deployed as an inverted V, supported at the center by the mast section. Results: 75m: 0, 40m: 0, 20m: 7, 15m: 6, 6m: 0, 2m: 2, 70cm: 0
Five of those 20m contacts came after 1800z, at which point 20m went from dead-seal-in-the-water feeding frenzy to Death Valley, as if millions of transmitters suddenly cried out, and then were silenced. I learned an important lesson: the stock 2.4KHz IF filter on an FT-100 is woefully inadequate when the bands get THAT crowded! Copying anyone in that morass of overlapping stations was a minor miracle. Funny, 'cause 15 was wide open the whole event - I kept hearing people scattered loosely from one end of it to the other; but everyone kept on logpiling into the mess on 20. Another important lesson: bring along that second set of TV mast sections, and get that wire up in the air as a flattop. I didn't do NEARLY as well most of the time as I did last year, owing I think to the inefficient deployment of the wire. Trouble is, carrying 10 4' sections of steel mast around is a DRAG, and I'm trying to *lighten* the load. Maybe if I could get some good collapsable fishpoles or painters poles, or even some lighter weight aluminum mast sections.
One humorous sideshow occurred late Saturday afternoon. I had some tubing and fittings along with me, and was amusing myself before Field Day by starting to build my interpretation of a W3FF Buddipole as Phil Salas AD5X might have built it. The fixed arms are 18" lengths of 1/2" aluminum tubing with 1/8 NPT fittings threaded into the ends. A pair of Budd's super-light, super-strong extendable whips made up the balance. I haven't had a chance to build any coil sections for it yet. Anyhow, I kept trying and failing to hit KP2AA in the Virgin Islands, so I slammed the pseudo-BuddiPole sections together and it just happened to work out to a pretty much bang on 15m dipole. So I screwed it to a shovel handle and velcroed the result to my mast facing southeast, and nailed KP2AA on the first try with it; the lady running 15m was highly amused when I told her I just erected the antenna specifically to talk to her. Once I get a set of loading coils built for the Buddipole I'm hoping it'll be able to replace the 20m wire. I may still carry a dipole cut for 40 or 80 and try *it* as an inverted V, but the 20m Zepp just didn't have enough wire high enough to cut through.
Annoying side result: the tops of my feet were badly sunburned because I initially gooped up with SPF50 sunscreen at the inlaws' house, where I had my shoes on, and forgot to follow through when I got to the beach and took my shoes off. As a result, I have to smear on this weird smelling aloe and lanacaine goop to numb my feet enough to on my socks!
I decided to wrap it up and haul everything down at about 2000z, as the contacts had thinned WAY out, and the thunderstorm bearing down across Pinellas County from Tampa was looking truly ominous. Good call; just as I got the last of it down and bundled up, it started to rain. By the time I got off the beach and over to the Greek place for some gyros, it was a blinding visibility zero downpour.
One big disappointment was, despite hearing them faintly four or five times - twice on 6m, once or twice on 2m(!) and once or twice on 15m or 20m, don't remember which - I was never able to work the combined GARS/GARC/SFCCARC station up in Gainesville.
All in all, I enjoyed Field Day. I do still need some work in the antenna and mast departments. I also need to bite the bullet and pack three 14AH cells instead of 2 and the 7AH; I was terrified of running out of battery before I ran out of event, as I figured that recharging overnight off the father-in-law's trickle charger would not be Kosher. As it turned out, I did have just enough oomph in the third battery to carry me through to the end of the day. -- WA4UF
The setup was the latest refinement of my portable station: FT-100, MFJ-901 manual tuner, 24' of RS tv mast sections, 4el 2m and 3el 6m homebuilt Yagis, 20m EDZ deployed flattop in the trees at 20'. Power was provided by two 14AH and 1 7AH gelcells pulled from UPSes at work; I used up the little guy and one of the big ones on this first run. I didn't start setting up until after 1800z, which would let me run until 2100z on Sunday. Results: 75m: 1, 40m: 10, 20m: 1, 15m: 2, 6m: 7, 2m: 2 70cm: 0, but not for lack of trying!
Sunday morning I dragged out of bed, took everything down, packed it all up along with a folding chair and tent canopy, and headed for my favorite portable location, Indian Rocks Beach. The setup was the same as above, except the 20m EDZ was deployed as an inverted V, supported at the center by the mast section. Results: 75m: 0, 40m: 0, 20m: 7, 15m: 6, 6m: 0, 2m: 2, 70cm: 0
Five of those 20m contacts came after 1800z, at which point 20m went from dead-seal-in-the-water feeding frenzy to Death Valley, as if millions of transmitters suddenly cried out, and then were silenced. I learned an important lesson: the stock 2.4KHz IF filter on an FT-100 is woefully inadequate when the bands get THAT crowded! Copying anyone in that morass of overlapping stations was a minor miracle. Funny, 'cause 15 was wide open the whole event - I kept hearing people scattered loosely from one end of it to the other; but everyone kept on logpiling into the mess on 20. Another important lesson: bring along that second set of TV mast sections, and get that wire up in the air as a flattop. I didn't do NEARLY as well most of the time as I did last year, owing I think to the inefficient deployment of the wire. Trouble is, carrying 10 4' sections of steel mast around is a DRAG, and I'm trying to *lighten* the load. Maybe if I could get some good collapsable fishpoles or painters poles, or even some lighter weight aluminum mast sections.
One humorous sideshow occurred late Saturday afternoon. I had some tubing and fittings along with me, and was amusing myself before Field Day by starting to build my interpretation of a W3FF Buddipole as Phil Salas AD5X might have built it. The fixed arms are 18" lengths of 1/2" aluminum tubing with 1/8 NPT fittings threaded into the ends. A pair of Budd's super-light, super-strong extendable whips made up the balance. I haven't had a chance to build any coil sections for it yet. Anyhow, I kept trying and failing to hit KP2AA in the Virgin Islands, so I slammed the pseudo-BuddiPole sections together and it just happened to work out to a pretty much bang on 15m dipole. So I screwed it to a shovel handle and velcroed the result to my mast facing southeast, and nailed KP2AA on the first try with it; the lady running 15m was highly amused when I told her I just erected the antenna specifically to talk to her. Once I get a set of loading coils built for the Buddipole I'm hoping it'll be able to replace the 20m wire. I may still carry a dipole cut for 40 or 80 and try *it* as an inverted V, but the 20m Zepp just didn't have enough wire high enough to cut through.
Annoying side result: the tops of my feet were badly sunburned because I initially gooped up with SPF50 sunscreen at the inlaws' house, where I had my shoes on, and forgot to follow through when I got to the beach and took my shoes off. As a result, I have to smear on this weird smelling aloe and lanacaine goop to numb my feet enough to on my socks!
I decided to wrap it up and haul everything down at about 2000z, as the contacts had thinned WAY out, and the thunderstorm bearing down across Pinellas County from Tampa was looking truly ominous. Good call; just as I got the last of it down and bundled up, it started to rain. By the time I got off the beach and over to the Greek place for some gyros, it was a blinding visibility zero downpour.
One big disappointment was, despite hearing them faintly four or five times - twice on 6m, once or twice on 2m(!) and once or twice on 15m or 20m, don't remember which - I was never able to work the combined GARS/GARC/SFCCARC station up in Gainesville.
All in all, I enjoyed Field Day. I do still need some work in the antenna and mast departments. I also need to bite the bullet and pack three 14AH cells instead of 2 and the 7AH; I was terrified of running out of battery before I ran out of event, as I figured that recharging overnight off the father-in-law's trickle charger would not be Kosher. As it turned out, I did have just enough oomph in the third battery to carry me through to the end of the day. -- WA4UF
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