2007 ARRL Field Day
06/26/2007 |
W5DAR
Field Day 2007
Early on, our club presdent and members decided that this year would be dedicated to public information more than the contest. I volunteered to be the chairman. What was I thinking???
We operated from the yard behind the Luna County Emergency Operations Center, and inside of the brand new Mobile Emergency Command Post. Friday afternoon revealed 101 degree temps, but the stations were assembled as the sun went down.
The main voice station, and the GOTA station both operated on Hustler 5BVT verticals, and the CW station operated on a dipole. We seperated the verticals by about 300 foot, and the dipole was about 100 foot from one of the verticals. We were hoping that the cross polarization between voice and CW would help, and it did. There was little interference between the voice and cw operations.
Our one glich was when the command post was connected to the commercial power mains, it popped the fuse unknown to us. As we sat around late Friday night, all of us sudden the lights went out. An hour or so of troubleshooting, we found that the lights and stuff all ran off of the battery, and it was recharged by either the 120 mains, or the generator. The command post had been setting for a while and I guess every county official had been inside playing in the new toy. When we plugged it in, and the charger kicked in, it popped the protection fuse on the battery charger. They were replaced, and all was well again, with no further incident.
Operating was kind of slow for us. The CW station played on 40m to start off with, and while our star CW guy (WW3JC) was on break, the club president Don (KB5ZBI) went up on 15m voice and made a bunch of contacts. The main station, and the GOTA station stayed pretty much on 20m for the most part. Just because I had the logger set up already, we used my call (N5XNF) on the GOTA station. It was quite strange hearing other people using my call.
Overall, we had a very good time. We had several inactive hams come by and look at the set up, but not a lot of public activity. It wasn't from a lack of us trying: we had ads in the news paper, on the local radio stations, and on the TV public info channel. I even sent invitations to the major news media.
Too much competition from the electronic generation i guess.
We owe special thanks to Luna County OEM, and to Luna County SAR for use of their mobile command posts.
Next year we may try from a more remote location.
73 from N5XNF and the W5DAR group -- N5XNF
Early on, our club presdent and members decided that this year would be dedicated to public information more than the contest. I volunteered to be the chairman. What was I thinking???
We operated from the yard behind the Luna County Emergency Operations Center, and inside of the brand new Mobile Emergency Command Post. Friday afternoon revealed 101 degree temps, but the stations were assembled as the sun went down.
The main voice station, and the GOTA station both operated on Hustler 5BVT verticals, and the CW station operated on a dipole. We seperated the verticals by about 300 foot, and the dipole was about 100 foot from one of the verticals. We were hoping that the cross polarization between voice and CW would help, and it did. There was little interference between the voice and cw operations.
Our one glich was when the command post was connected to the commercial power mains, it popped the fuse unknown to us. As we sat around late Friday night, all of us sudden the lights went out. An hour or so of troubleshooting, we found that the lights and stuff all ran off of the battery, and it was recharged by either the 120 mains, or the generator. The command post had been setting for a while and I guess every county official had been inside playing in the new toy. When we plugged it in, and the charger kicked in, it popped the protection fuse on the battery charger. They were replaced, and all was well again, with no further incident.
Operating was kind of slow for us. The CW station played on 40m to start off with, and while our star CW guy (WW3JC) was on break, the club president Don (KB5ZBI) went up on 15m voice and made a bunch of contacts. The main station, and the GOTA station stayed pretty much on 20m for the most part. Just because I had the logger set up already, we used my call (N5XNF) on the GOTA station. It was quite strange hearing other people using my call.
Overall, we had a very good time. We had several inactive hams come by and look at the set up, but not a lot of public activity. It wasn't from a lack of us trying: we had ads in the news paper, on the local radio stations, and on the TV public info channel. I even sent invitations to the major news media.
Too much competition from the electronic generation i guess.
We owe special thanks to Luna County OEM, and to Luna County SAR for use of their mobile command posts.
Next year we may try from a more remote location.
73 from N5XNF and the W5DAR group -- N5XNF
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WW3JC hard at work
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