Field Day: What to expect?

[gil]

Fortunately for Gil, the bands have really been sucking lately so maybe we won't be polluting Europe's airwaves too much.

Well, I wish I would hear something right now, anything! Never seen the bands so dead before.. I'm in my living room right now with the RT-320 set to 14285... Not a peep, nothing on 14300 either. I'd like to get a few contacts on field day, just to test the radio. I had one QSO with a station in Portugal on 3W, but I'd like a few more audio reports.

Sunday I might take the MTR out, if the propagation improves.

Gil.

[cockpitbob]

I spent most of yesterday at the club's Field Day operation.  I finally got to sit at a digital station and get trained-up on PSK by an expert.  One of our club members holds more country awards for PSK than anyone else.  Sitting there watching a waterfall and clicking macros isn't really my cup of tea, but it's something I should probably know.  I do want email ability (RMSexpress/Winmore).  I didn't get to try it, but I've got a handful on notes, so that's next on my ham learning journey.

BTW, the bands really did suck yesterday.  In 30 minutes I was able to make 1 PSK contact.  It was frustrating watching the CQs start solid and fade out before they even finished.  Lots of background noise with everyone trying and no one getting through due to the bands and noise.

[vwflyer]

I have yet to really participate in field day. I think I participated more this year than any other year. Last night and this morning I found a few minutes to get on the air at my home QTH. I perhaps have a grand total of one hour field day time now. I just wanted to see if anybody could hear the 4 watts radiating from the wire attached to my YouKits HB1B in the midst of all that mayhem. In all, I made about eight contacts. My strategy was to tune around the bands until I found a moderately strong signal, more or less in the clear, calling CQ FD. I would then answer him and eight times out of ten I was heard. Nobody was handing out signal reports and I had to repeat myself for a couple of them but considering the poor band condition and the QRM I think that this little test was quit successful. I'm proud of my HB1B.

[vwflyer]

Sitting there watching a waterfall and clicking macros isn't really my cup of tea, but it's something I should probably know.

PSK31, being a pretty good mode for DX has way too much macro clicking in my humble opinion, and I totally agree, not too fun. Sometimes though I'm successful in getting a good rag chew going and it's a lot of fun. All you have to do is type in a question about his brag list instead of hit the macro for "FB TNX FOR QSO ES 73" macro. Usually the other guy will say that it's been forever since he rag chewed on PSK and that he greatly enjoyed it too.

My brother still has not learned CW and so we have found that PSK31 is the best way for us to chat since propagation rarely is good enough for us to have a SSB phone chat.

I do like having the ability to send and receive email with winmore. Without it I have to relay messages through a ham who I don't know and hope he copies everything down correctly. With winmore I can send a message directly to the person who needs the message even though he isn't a ham. For example, if an earthquake takes out my neck of the woods and all commercial communication goes down, my family in washington will want to know if we survived or not and sending them a direct email is the most sure and efficient way of doing that.
I am trying to figure out how to auto-forward my emails from my gmail account to my winmore account based on their size. I want to be able to send only the small (text only) emails to winmore so that I can check my gmail emails via winmore while I'm out camping and away from cel coverage. So far I haven't figured out how to do it.

[Quietguy]

I am trying to figure out how to auto-forward my emails from my gmail account to my winmore account based on their size.

I have not researched this, but I'm going to guess that you can't.  Or, at least if the WL2K people see that you are doing it they might disable your account.  It would be very easy to break the no-commercial traffic ham rule with an auto-forward setup.  One forwarded advertising message would put you and the WL2K team in violation of FCC rules.  I believe the FCC still holds the entrance node to WL2K network responsible for enforcing all rules.

Wally

[RadioRay]

When I was a fulltime sailor, I used a commercial service called 'SailMail'. It required my marine HF license and was a paid service.  It used PACTOR II/III.  Being a commercial/non-ham service, there were never contests, and content/encryption was totally user choice. So, WINLINK was for some things and SailMail was for anything else.

BTW - the Marine HF license are no test and after filling outhte e-forms on the FCC website and paying my fee $180 at that time, I had my call sign on their website within 3 days.  It may have been there earlier, but I never thought to look so early. If we had HF Land Mobile licensing like many other countries, I'd do that, now that I live ashore.


73 de Ray  ..._  ._

[vwflyer]

I have not researched this, but I'm going to guess that you can't

You're probably right. As my gmail account is a personal account an not used for business uses I figured I could probably keep out the junk mail (especially since the size restriction would filter out anything with images) and keep from busting any regs but, WL2K I'm sure would have no faith in my measures and not allow it.

[vwflyer]

If we had HF Land Mobile licensing like many other countries, I'd do that, now that I live ashore.

We used to pay for that type of HF license in Mexico but it was quite a bit pricier than $180 annually. The price was one reason we abondoned HF once everyone got satellite internet.
In Brazil we are still using HF in some villages but due to the frequencies assigned by the government (none higher than 8 Mhz) some of the further villages are struggling to make reliable contacts. I'm going to look into helping them set up a trial digital station to see if they can improve their success rate that way.

[NCGunDude]

Our club had a great field day, IMO. We were a 2 station site, plus 6m. My Icom 7200 was used for 6m, we had a Harris RF 3200 for HF, a CW and a digital stations.

The CW and digital stations split time on the air, although next year we'll probably go with 3 stations, HF, digital and CW.

We worked 20m and 40m during the day and evening, 80m in the early morning. 3.5 hours of sleep and I feel great! It was worth every minute. We made mostly Eastern US contacts pushing as far west as the Rockies. A few West Coast and European, and lots of CAN and Latin American contacts.

This was my first field day as a participant, 3rd since I've been licensed. Couldn't have been a better weekend, but no band openings that we could tell. Our 6m contacts were local.

73

[Pirate96]

Always have fun getting set up for field day. Got to try out a new way to shoot wire antennas into the air.

We did log some 10m contacts Sunday morning.

And yes we cooked a whole hog and had live music.  Got to see a nice Go Box with solar panels at the event

[gil]

Hello,

I use a slingshot, fishing weight and line.. Works like a charm.

Gil

[cockpitbob]

Getting wires up in the trees is always fun.  Bow and arrow, slingshot and fishing reel and of course the tennis ball air-cannon.  On another forum a guy was describing his Field Day fun with a bow.  They lost 2 arrows in the tree.  Had the line snag after shooting which jerked the arrow back at them.  It landed 5' from their feet :o.  He said in winter there should be a visible canopy of lines in that tree  ::) ???   Well, I guess that's what Field Day is for; learning.

[vwflyer]

I use a slingshot, fishing weight and line.. Works like a charm.

Gil, I assume you use a real with that line. I've tried shooting fishing line without a real and I just made a mess of things.

[cockpitbob]

I use a slingshot, fishing weight and line.. Works like a charm.

Gil, I assume you use a real with that line. I've tried shooting fishing line without a real and I just made a mess of things.

I have a fishing reel attached to the wrist bar of my slingshot with little hose clamps.  So long as I play out about 6' of line before shooting, and the line doesn't snag on anything, I can get a 1oz weight over a 70' tree.  Then I use the fishing line to pull a heavier line back over the tree.  I should try a 2oz weight.  There's been a couple times where the weight wasn't heavy enough to pull the line all the way down to the ground.

[vwflyer]

I think I need to buy a fishing reel:)