For the second year in a row we held Field Day in the Staples Parking lot. We chose this place because it is centrally located and easy to reach by the some 10,000 residents of Newport. In a real emergency it is intended that they will know where to find us and can do so on foot if necessary.

  Our club, the Lincoln County Amateur Radio Club - N7OY, is located on the central Oregon Coast and has been around for many years. However, most of our members are fairly new hams with less than three years experience. We have a core of us "old timers" that are working hard to bring along our newer members. For that reason our goal for this year was to help as many people as possible to see or even use different kinds of equipment and operating modes.  

EQUIPMENT and ANTENNAS:

At the opening we actually had six transmitters set up and ready to operate on SSB and digital modes. We had plans for a CW station and demonstration, however, our operator became ill and was not able to attend. We had 10 antennas in the air ranging from 80 meters through 70 cm. They consisted of wire antennas and verticals. We did not have a tower or mast to get anything above 30 feet. We had four stations set up for SSB on various bands and two for digital.  

OPERATIONS:

This year we concentrated on our GOTA station in order to get as many people to experience HF as possible. We had several new hams and non-ham visitors operate for the first time. Of our 143 logged contacts 79 were from the GOTA station! For quite a while we had three ladies concentrating on making contacts. Two of them who had never been on the air and one inactive ham. They took turns operating, logging, and listening. They accounted for the bulk of our GOTA contacts.  

One of our operators spent hours trying to make VHF and UHF contacts without results. We are boxed in by the coast range and hills and simply could not get out with simplex. If we loose all our repeaters in a real emergency our only communications will have to be on HF.  

The rest of us were set up so that people could see us operate and encouraged them to learn. With six transmitters and antennas in such a confined area (see our map below) we soon learned that we could not all operate at once. We knew going into this setup that front end overload and intermodulation distortion were likely to be a problem. They were! Next year we will have some bandpass filters and probably spread out more taking advantage of the 300 meter rule. We plan to make operating skills a higher priority. However, for now, making many contacts was low on our priority list. Of our 64 non-GOTA contacts 30 were digital. Most of our time was showing people how to operate rather than actually operating.  

An interesting note about antennas: 

We only had only four contacts outside of the western states. Last year we had 15 including Hawaii, Japan, and Italy. That was with 36 less overall contacts. Those contacts were made on a rotatable 20 meter dipole at 40 feet. This year we did not have an antenna over 30 feet. We will be looking at a beam at 40' or more next year.   Fun: We had lots of fun. We spent more time talking among ourselves than on the radio. We really enjoyed our time together and meeting a lot of new people.  Probably the best was all the good food which is a must for a good Field Day!  

CONCLUSION:

We had no problem reaching our goal to help as many people as possible to see or even use different kinds of equipment and also operating modes. Not only did our members do so, but, many visitors came and did the same. It was our best public relations event ever and we should see several new amateur operators in our club soon because of it.    Thank you ARRL for setting up the bonus points to encourage us to be in a public place and to make public relations an important part of Field Day.