[K3PZN-List] Field Day Notes

[Heath, Rob]

Field Day wasn't even over yet and our new chairman already wanted us to
start thinking about next year.  Mike certainly has a job ahead of him.  As
well as things went this year, it's going to be hard to top it next year.
Here are some of my observations:

 

1.   One of the highlights for me was seeing the youth participation on the
GOTA station.  Doug did a great job involving our aspiring operators.  We
will definitely want to continue this in the future.

 

2.   The club generator is in need of some serious attention.  We will be
picking up this topic in the near future.  I have the generator at my house
now.  I will coordinate organizing some work parties in the next few weeks.

 

3.   We were fortunate to have a number of smaller portable generators on
hand.  It is nice to have extra capacity on hand in case one fails.  Putting
a 4x8 sheet of foam insulating board in front of the generators greatly
reduced the noise.  I plan to improve on this for next year.  I am thinking
of making a light frame to break the sheet into two or three sections hinged
together.  I also need to add some hooks or eye bolts to allow it to be
anchored so it doesn't blow away in the wind.  Generator noise could become
an issue if we need to setup at another location in closer proximity to
houses or other activity.

 

4.   I agree with Jim regarding the guest operating schedules.  We need a
more formal process for this.  Maybe the station captains can coordinate to
collectively make up a single signup sheet for operating.  We can leave this
at the headquarters table with the other sign in sheet.

 

5.   Some group photos might be nice.  A couple pictures of the entire
group, GOTA operators, band captains, etc.

 

6.   It may not be a real contest, but we do keep score.  It would be
interesting to keep track of how the different bands are doing.  We could
put a white board in the picnic/gathering place with each of the stations
and their current QSO count.  People can update it occasionally as they are
roaming around.

 

7.   I tried running my station from a UPS this year.  It worked fine during
testing with a minimal load on the generator.  However, the UPS started
cycling between line and battery when a larger load was applied to the
generator.  I will have to investigate and resolve this issue.  I run the
station at home on the UPS and the same thing will happen when we lose power
and I am running the shack from the generator.

 

8.   I setup a rig to operate packet on 2 meters to access the DX packet
cluster this year.  The rig worked great and had no problems accessing
W3LPLs node.  I wasn't pouncing much, so I did not get much benefit.  But it
was nice to have it there and watch the spots.  I did pick up an Alaska
station and a couple other new states that I would have otherwise missed.
We don't really need the sections for multipliers, but it still fun to see
how many we can get.