[HCRA] Field Day With the WMA Sparks!

[Peter]

Hi Gang,

Looks like field day was a pretty good success for the club.  Ours was a 
great success also.  With QRP, contacts were difficult but that was to be 
expected.  True to our goals, it was in every way, a low stress weekend 
while living in the lap of luxury.  We stayed at Partrige Hollow Camp Ground 
in Munson, MA.  They had a built in swimming pool and warm showers.  We were 
set up by 2:00 on Saturday but decided to have lunch before getting started 
on the air.  By the time we got done eating it was about 4:00 before the 
rigs got hopping.  Time between contacts was pretty long because most 
stations with more power than us were making contacts with the stations that 
were the loudest on the bands.  We seemed to do better with other weak 
signal stations.

We are already planning FD2006 with the WMA Sparks and will be advertising 
it with our main focus on low stress.  We are hoping that we may get some 
following in the process.  There should be room for everybody to have a good 
field day; clubs, individuals, and group efforts alike.  We will have few 
rules regarding operation, probably just power limit and let the rest be 
delegated to whoever is setting up the station.

Once the stations were set up, operators migrated from one station to the 
other.  The stations were both FT-817s.  One connected to a Cushcraft A4 
tri-band beam up about 20 feet and the other connected to a 132 foot dipole 
up about 40 feet, fed with balanced feedline - 400 Ohm into an MFJ 
transmatch.  The station with the dipole made more contacts than the one 
with the beam.  Maybe we can get the beam up higher next year.

Frandy got to try out his Tri-band beam and his rooftop tower which was used 
with a relatively long mast to get the beam off the ground a distance.  It 
was tough getting all of the bug nests out of the traps but persistance paid 
off over time and the thing sang like a parakeet.  That station operated 
from a roomy tent with plenty of elbow room.  Larry got to try out his new 
popup camper at field day for the first time and it worked out well using 
the screened in "porch" as an operating position.  Marty had a chance to get 
real cozy with his FT-817 which he had not operated much since he purchased 
it until Field Day.  Took a while to get it into the right modes for 
operation.  The small operation manual came in very handy to make all the 
necessary changes.  For this Field Day, I became known as Mr. Power Pole.  I 
got a ton of supplies from West Mountain Radio and other places with the aim 
of making our 12 volt distribution system as safe as safe can be.  I made up 
special harnesses with fuses at the battery.  Each station had its own rig 
runner properly fused.  I had a significant amount of cable so that we could 
make up any supply cable that we needed for the operation.  All of the rigs 
were power poled.  Once Frandy spotted my official West Mountain Radio Power 
Pole crimper, he went crazy making up power pole connections on everything 
he owned using the power poles that he had brought for the purpose.

Larry's son Jacob and my son Michael were there the entire time.  They had a 
great time playing with eachother.  They went swimming with their mom's  in 
tow and did some fishing and frog hunting.  The first night they talked to 
the wee hours of the morning and the next night they were sleeping early as 
they had been worn out by activity and the lack of sleep the previous night. 
They tried making contacts on 15 meters but weren't successful most likely 
because of the fact of QRP and it really was hard to get a word in edgewise 
at that power level.  Larry's dog Fuzzy was welcomed at the campground and 
became the Field Day mascot.

We shared a lot of ideas like how to make dipole insulators out of 1 1/4 
inch pvc pipe or verifying antenna operation with an MFJ analyzer or a neat 
way of attaching a weight to the end of fish line prior to launching it over 
the tree with a sling shot made for that purpose or even just how to get the 
line up high in the tree using a combination of fish line, nylon twine and 
cloths line sized braided rope or something as simple as knowing which type 
of knots to tie in which circumstance.  For knots, we used the bowline, 
sheet bend, taught line, clove hitch, and truckers knot which has a two to 
one mechanical advantage for tying the tower support lines.

Everybody shared in the cooking department.  Saturday night's meal was a 
smorgasbord type of pot luck dinner.  We had fruit salad, sweet and sour 
meat balls over rice, garden salad, and Mariusz KB1MDS brought a sampling of 
some Polish food; real Polish Kielbasa and mustard and Polish rye bread for 
dessert we had ice cream and brownies.  Nobody walked away hungry. 
Everybody participated in preparing food and the results were shared with 
anybody that wanted food.  Nobody got dehydrated.

We had a couple of visitors from the club and enjoyed their company.

Takedown was pretty grueling in the high heat and humidity as I'm sure it 
was at the HCRA event.  We took our time and drank plenty of water.  We 
finished up at about 4:00 on Sunday afternoon.  After everything was down 
and packed away we all sat around and started the planning for next field 
day.  We left the campsite at about 4:30.

I hope everybody had as much fun as we did.  If you didn't then you should 
think about how to change that for next year.  Renting a camp site was more 
expensive than attending a field day event where the facility is provided 
for you by an organization but that was made up for by the fact that we had 
access to the campground facilities.  Best wishes to all wherever their next 
field is.

73 de KI1I,
Peter




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