07/18/2008 | W3AO W3AO/KE3Q 23A MDC
The Potomac Valley Radio Club (PVRC) and the Columbia (MD) Amateur Radio Association (CARA) teamed up for their 11th consecutive year to set up and operate the massive W3AO Field Day entry. The skills of PVRC and CARA are a great match up for an excellent FD entry. PVRC is a major contest club (see www.pvrc.org) which can provide top notch contest operators, antennas, and equipment to the team. CARA (see www.columbiaara.org/ ) is extensively involved in emergency preparedness with Howard County, has a very capable satellite station and team, and has among its members those with excellent computer skills, traffic handling experience, VHF/UHF operating knowledge, and organizational skills. We need the resources and person-power of two such successful clubs to conduct such a large scale Field Day activity.

In this years soapbox, we want to focus on the question we hear most which is: Wow, are you really running that many transmitters at the same time? The answer is yes, and as you might imagine doing so requires careful planning. (If you are interested in our tower and computer arrangements, please see our soapbox reports from previous yearswe havent changed these significantly in several years.) Besides the obvious requirements of sufficient operators, radios, antennas, towers, computers, and power, the issue that most questioners ask about is how we prevent interference between stations. Since we enter in high transmitter count classes, having lots of space to take advantage of the 1000 foot circle is a must. Our site is an excellent one, in that it is on relatively high ground and provides us with a continuous, unobstructed run of 1000 feet to set up our 13 towers and VHF/UHF rover. This year, for the first time, we set up our towers in two ranks along the roughly 1000 foot line, which allowed antennas on the same bands to be kept relatively far apart. All antennas for the same band were kept in the same rank, and all antennas were pointed in the same direction, that is with the antennas in the same rank all end to end to minimize signal coupling.

Antennas included 3 3-el yagis for 20, 3 3-el yagis for 15 and 2 3-el yagis for 10. For 40 we had two 2-el yagis and 3 dipoles, for 80 and 160 we had two dipoles each. We also had a VHF tower, a GOTA tribander tower, and a satellite tower. All wire antennas were strung between the towers, and were flat dipoles. Since on all HF bands but 160 and 10 we had to accommodate 4 stations on each band simultaneously (SSB, CW, and Digital and GOTA), wide spacing of antennas is very important. For instance, we were able to space our 4 twenty meter beams (including the GOTA tribander) no closer than 300 feet apart, and all end-to-end. With transmitters at the 100 watt level, this worked extremely well, with little or no interference between stations on the same band. Yes, we did have band pass filters on all HF transceivers, which minimized desense between bands, but we made no attempt to filter separate portions of the same band, which is extremely hard to do without expensive crystal filters. On VHF, we had an extensive array of antennas on a tower with an ingenious dual rotator design by KA3EJJ that allowed us to point two sets of antennas on the same mast independently. We also had the well-equipped Winnebago rover of W3DIO and K3LFO for VHF/UHF and microwave.

So, how did we do? The table below shows our performance for the past 11 years with QSO's, Pts, Class Entered, and overall finish.

1998 6,697 19,366 4A 2

1999 9,163 26,224 7A 1

2000 9,908 31,534* 30A 1

2001 10,143 31,760* 26A 1

2002 10,158 33,442* 38A 1

2003 7,754 27,834 51A 1

2004 9,304 32,372 50A 1

2005 8,553 27,534 21A 1

2006 9,504 31,144 22A 1

2007 8,648 27,150 19A 1

2008 10,709 33,664* 23A TBD

Each * represents a new all-time all-class FD scoring record. Note that this year we broke the existing all-time scoring record which we established in 2002. We also set a new total QSO record for our team this year, as we edged within 5% of the all-time QSO record of 11,201 which was set running many simultaneous KW transmitters at a major peak of the sunspot cycle in 1981 by W2RQ, The Yankee Clipper Contest Club and The Wireless Institute of the Northeast. (The W2RQ score was relatively low, given the 1X multiplier for high power.) Yes, this is the bottom of the sunspot cycle, but sporadic E can be more important in June on 15 and 10 meters than is F layer propagationeven in a sunspot maximum. And short skip Es on 20 was fantastic, as the band was open 24 hours to virtually the entire U.S.! For our detailed Band/Mode QSO Breakdown go to

http://lists.contesting.com/_3830/2008-07/msg00080.html

With careful planning and lots of help from a large number of PVRC and CARA members, we were able to glean virtually all the bonus points. We did miss 80 GOTA bonus points, but for good reason--we had so many GOTA ops at times that to give everyone a chance to operate, there wasnt time to let every operator make the required 20 qsos to gain a special bonus!

This year we were honored that Howard County Fire & Rescue's Office of Emergency Management (OEM) partnered with our Field Day. OEM Lieutenants Kenny Coyle and James Singletary deployed the Emergency Services Command Unit, equipped with an Incident Commanders' Radio Interface radio connectivity system, and connected the county's 800mhz system with the hams, even though individually, the radios cannot communicate with each other. Through the use of the ICRI system, the two technologies were able communicate with each other. The only obvious indication of the bridge, known as a radio patch, was a time delay of approximately three seconds between radio transmissions. See http://www.howardfire.net/oemfieldday.htm# for details.

Some important thank-yous: We are very appreciative of the help of some very generous people and organizations. First of all, we wish to thank Owen, K3CB, for the loan of the excellent 15 KVA diesel generator that he has used so successfully for years at the fabulous W8GP Grid Pirates West Virginia mountain top VHF contest site. We wish, also, to thank the International Association of Firefighter Local 2000 for donation of the diesel fuel to power our generator for the weekend. See http://www.iaff.org/Comm/SpotLight/08stories/071508HowardCoHAMS.htm for an account of the IAFF rescue. Also, we wish to thank Delegate Gail Bates for her continued support of our Field Day activities over the years.
What a great Field Day! Hope we worked all of you. If not, well be looking for you next year on every mode and band! -- K3RA