[nrv-hams] A Forward to the club from Donnie AB4I --Try 2

Sun Jun 30 02:02:29 EDT 2013

Vary nice rundown Carter, my thanks for you taking the time to do it.
Solar is a good way to go, we had a new ham come to Field Day and he
brought 2 panels, batteries, and a controller.  We worked all weekend off
of those using the main radios on voice.  That is extra points there.  Then
we had a vertical for digital, and two dipoles, well in all actually they
were Fan Dipoles.  A true 160 to 10 meter Fan dipole is a monster!  But the
best part was having the High School kids and their parents there!  That
was priceless.   One family the Dad wants to get his license now and the
Mom got interested enough to again get on the air.  She is an Extra by the
way with a call of W4/G4JQE.  While she is now a citizen of the US she very
seldom got on the air, now she is very happy playing radio. :)  We had 160
contacts on the GOTA station, and still tallying the rest up.  A very nice
Field Day with 20 people involved for Floyd.  You guys really need to get
in with one of the High Schools, Middle or Elementary schools, it is a
blast working with the kids.  See you later.

73
Russ Abbey
KG4MAV

On Sat, Jun 29, 2013 at 5:46 PM, Carter Craigie <carter128 at verizon.net>wrote:

> Thoughts on Field Day 2013:
> Another Field Day is now history and I am writing these thoughts while
> the muscles still ache and I still remember how they got that way.
> There was a lot to like about this FD and a fine time was had by
> hopefully all.  However, there are also always a few kinks that
> crop-up, which is an opportunity for us to make things better the next
> time around.
>
> I especially enjoyed the opportunity to use N6QDO's Elecraft KX-3 rig.
> The little rig is just a delight and I was very impressed by its
> performance, even though the experience will cost me some money,
> because now I have to have one!  My K2 has always been my favorite
> Field Day rig, but I can see the KX-3 having an edge in several areas,
> one being the native integration of voice, CW, and digital operations.
> You could use all three modes with this rig on the fly, which would
> make it fantastically flexible as a Field Day rig.
>
> It was great having multiple K2's on site!  I understand that was
> actually an accident, since the TS-440 developed a problem and had to
> be replaced.  The word went out for replacement rigs and what arrived
> were both K2's that were provided by N3AO's and N4HY.  Naturally, I
> also brought my own QRP K2, as I always do, so there were three of
> these elegant little rigs at the NRVARC Field Day.  Bob and I operated
> our K2's through the night QRP CW, as Carter's higher power K2 had to
> go home at night. It would have been nice to have two Phone stations,
> but working with what we had, we collectively made something past 700
> QSO's for the three stations.
>
> We do need to work on some procedural issues, one being the use of the
> bandpass filters.  The filter for the phone station was damaged by
> transmitting high power on the wrong band, which burned out one of the
> coupling capacitors.  The repair will be easy though, as we built the
> filters the way that we did knowing full well that this would happen
> eventually.  That's to be expected from time to time, bleary eyed
> sleep-deprived humans being as they are.  I will make a PDF on the
> proper use of the bandpass filters and we should also make an
> instruction card to be attached to each unit.  The filters worked
> well, as I do not recall hearing any interference from the other two
> stations, but being able to operate two transmitters on the same band
> and the same times requires good separation of the  antennas, since
> the filters cannot help that situation.
>
> The logging software had a couple of little issues that took a few
> minutes to sort out.  One laptop was dedicated to being the master
> computer, but a different laptop was started first and thought it was
> master.  AJ4HJ gave  telephone support and we collectively convinced
> the errant laptop that it was really not the master and N4HY was able
> to get everything reset and even merged the separate log that had been
> growing independently into the master.  We thought we had lost some
> 15-meter QSO's, but they are there and, as best as I can tell, the log
> is okay.  There was a momentary scare in the morning, when the master
> computer went to sleep after I finally had to sleep, but everything is
> okay before dawn when the computer and CW op both woke up and started
> operating again.
>
> The ergonomics of the stations left a bit to be desired, which was the
> source of a fair number of aching muscles. Among other things, we
> needed much better seats, with much thicker padding.  After hours of
> operating, I had visions of a nice hammock chair with lumbar support
> and a lot less cramped than a picnic bench covered in cables that had
> to be dodged.  There were a few times that I wished that the computer
> mouse was separate as some of laptops were a little finicky. Also,
> let's tape the CAT-5 network cabling to the table top to keep it out
> of harm's way.
>
> The coffee was excellent, BTW.  One young gentlemen made awesome
> coffee several times, which kept me going for hours. Life was good.
> :-)
>
> I understand an unsuccessful attempt was made to copy the ARRL Field
> Day message from W1AW on phone. Bummer.  A voice recorder is the way
> to go for a phone message.  Copying the message is much easier on CW
> and of course the digital modes are a natural.  Hopefully we will be
> successful next year and if not then shame on us, since as the message
> is transmitted multiple times on multiple frequencies in data, CW, and
> voice--so take your pick.
>
> We still need to do some work on our antennas.  This years arrangement
> was a good layout and looked nice too.  We could have used better
> frequency agility in the antenna on the far end, maybe a properly
> designed 5-band Off-center Fed Dipole (OCFD) or a wire antenna fed
> with tuned feeders and a remote antenna tuner.   BTW, the so-called
> G5RV antenna is a pretty fair antenna, but is actually far from
> optimum.  The G5RV is fundamentally a 20-meter antenna that also works
> to an extent on some other bands, but it involves accepting some some
> amount of loss in doing so.  The loss is not so bad on 20, 40 & 80M,
> but pretty high on 15 and 10-meters and we make it worse with long
> coaxial feed lines.  There are better antenna designs that work well
> on multiple bands and we may want to add some new stuff to our antenna
> farm next time.
>
> BTW, I did a search on DXSCAPE to see if N4NRV appeared on the DX
> clusters and discovered that we were spotted on 80M CW!  Cool.  I also
> checked to see if there was any 160-meter activity during Field Day
> and saw that several stations were active.  I have an idea for a
> lowband vertical that would work on 40-meters and down that may net us
> a few 160M QSO's and maybe Alaska and Hawaii on 80M.  I really wanted
> a vertical on Sunday morning at dawn when I heard Hawaii on 80M very
> well, but he could not hear me.  :-(
>
> Projects and prospects for next year:  Another bandpass filter so we
> can operate a GOTA station and still have three other stations?
> Definitely!   Better antennas?  Intercoms and headsets w/mics for all
> the stations to make logging and teaching and learning easier?  Good
> non-butt-destroying seats? (PLEASE!)  VHF operations?  Do satellite
> operations with our new Moxon antennas?  Packet? Digital?  How about a
> bicycle with a generator for making human-powered contacts? Solar
> power?  Field Day is an opportunity to experiment.
>
> Thanks to all for a great Field Day.  Looking forward to next year.  :-)
> 73,
> Donnie, AB4I
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