[Elecraft] Antennas for Field Day

[Jessie Oberreuter]

Ron wrote:
> Field day is about the only contest that I've been very active with.

     We used to only do Field Day as well, but after having a lot of
success on 2m and 6m at last year's, I talked the gang into trying a VHF
contest.  They'd tried once before, and failed miserably, but they were
willing to try again, so we tried the Sept. contest.  We didn't make a
huge number of contacts, but we more than demonstrated that the contest
was a lot of fun and there were plenty of contacts to be made.  We added
220 fm and 440 fm/cw/ssb to the list for the January contest and actually
made more contacts than we did last field day!  We haven't decided what we
are going to do for the June contest, but we're planning on running a
convoy in a loop through OR, ID, and WA in Sept.

     I bring this up especially in light of the recent "crazy idea" posts.
It doesn't take much to have fun at these contests.  We were running 12w
on 6m (MFJ) into an M2 loop, 20w on 2m (706) into a 3 element quad, 25w on
220 (ancient Kenwood mobile) into a mag-mount, and 5w on 440 (DX-70 and
junk box transverter) into a vertical.  It's also pretty easy to start
simple and progressively improve.  Location is the #1 factor, then bands,
then antennas, then power.  You could honestly have a lot of fun w/ 10w on
2 and 6 cw/ssb, and 5w fm HT's for 220 and 440.  My first 220 contact was
over 30 miles to a 5w HT on its rubber resistor.


--
Jessie Oberreuter
joberreu@moselle.com
"He's a bit on edge, Mr. Johnston -- he hasn't slept since 1945."