[Milsurplus] MRFD AAR for KA3EKH

[Ray Fantini]

Military Radio Field Day , 26 September 2020 AAR

What was supposed to be achieved by this project?

Last weekend was the first MRFD, Military Radio Field Day an effort to get people on the air using their Military Radio equipment or regular Ham radio gear. Extra credit was given for use of military radios, antennas and operation from the field.
My plan was to use the M151A1 MUTT with the AN/GRC-106 and VRC-46 to operate on several bands throughout the event along with working the existing MMRCG and MRCA nets before the evet in the morning.
Also anticipated operating RTTY on 7087 prior to the start of the event.

What was actually achieved?

I had received authorization to operate from the Fort Miles Complex located at Cape Henlopen Delaware from the Delaware State Parks Service and arrived on site just before nine Saturday morning. Set up the forty-meter inverted V antenna, secured source of local power so I did not have to run the generator and when setting the amplifier for the 106 discovered that the tuning motors in the ATU were not moving.
The ATU was stuck on the sixty-meter band. I did try opening up the radio and seeing if I was able to get the motors to start again but without tools was not able to remove the entire ATU assembly and fix it so was stuck on 60. Very frustrating to hear everyone on MMRCG forty-meter net but not be able to talk back.
Swapped out the forty-meter V for the sixty-meter V and was able to check into the MRCA net at noon without issue and after the net did contact N3FRQ and the group up at INFO Age along with KW1I up at High Point State Park in NJ and the group up at Port Clinton in PA.
Attempted to do a couple 51.0 FM contacts but the distance was just too great for FM, did have the log periodic set up and aimed North for the event but no signals were present.
Did discover later that afternoon that maybe because of the heat from the operations on sixty or who knows why the ATU motors started working again and was able to QSY but was not able to identify any of the other stations taking part. Looks like maybe there were several CW contacts that worked out great but me just running voice did not score anything.
With just the option of AM or USB I checked around 7.296 and up on twenty around 14.34/35 but not much going on up on twenty besides normal Ham contacts. Did try sitting on 18.1575 and doing a number of calls but no answers.
Just after 1600 hours local with the crowd thru the park starting to thin out and not being able to find where everyone was operating decided to start tearing down and loaded up and was out of the park just past 1700 or so. Did have some fun driving the mutt around the park and also did talk to a lot of people who saw what was going on and wanted to stop by and talk about the mutt and radio.


What aspects of the project work?

The pre planning with the State Park people worked out great, they were very supportive and great host for allowing me to drag out the mutt and all the antennas and wires and the like. They also provide local power so did not have to deal with running generator or mutt to keep the batteries up.
Although the AN\GRC-106 failed for the first half of the day it did come up and operate for the MRCA net and communications on the talking channel for the MRFD net on sixty meters. The VRC-46 and the log periodic antenna for it worked its just that it appears the distances are too great for VHF simplex.

What didn't work and why?

The failure of the GRC-106 was directly attributable to one of the first rules of that radio, if you don't run that radio every now and then it will develop problems with its mechanicals. I cannot remember the last time I ran the radio in the mutt up but should have tested the week before the event.
Although the radio started cooperating later in the day I had missed the scheduled time set up for doing RTTY in the afternoon. And with no way to directly contact the other stations involved was not able to do a RTTY contact or any other contacts on other bands.
Perhaps in future events we can have more of a set of fixed channels that we are concentrated around? Looks like the group up at Info Age went down and were operating on eighty on LSB and that's always an issue with the older military gear.
I would have preferred to have more activity, at least for voice in the twenty- and seventeen-meter band on USB being the antenna requirements are so much smaller.
One of the biggest problems turns out to be completely unrelated to radio. The car trailer that I have used for years for transporting the mutt belonged to a company that I use to work for and no longer have access to that trailer. I was able to borrow a trailer but had to pick it up Friday and return it Sunday and the round trip for doing this was significant.

What would you change if given a second chance?

Test all the radios the week prior to the event. Dose not matter if they worked the last time you use them or not. It's frustrating to know exactly what the problem is when you are in the field but also realize that you do not have the tools to fix it.
For things like Able Archer 83 have also drug along a second transceiver like a KWM-2A and if I had that on site would have been able to operate that as a backup and also on LSB. Maybe it's worth the trouble to drag along a second big radio just in case.
It will be interesting to see how the next field event goes, will be setting the mutt up again weather permitting in the back yard and attempt to do the RTTY and two morning nets from home.
Don't know what will be the next field event but know I have to resolve this trailer thing before that time being too much time was spent driving trailers around and not on radio.

Ray F/KA3EKH

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/milsurplus/attachments/20200928/49f5cd15/attachment.html>