Field Day

Started by Bigguy49, June 25, 2017, 09:23:13 PM

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Bigguy49

Hope every one had their fill of field day not sure how well our bad we did . Saturday morning started out thunder ,rain , and a question in my mind if I really wanted to get my butt out of bed , but I did. Drove over and helped one of our club members load up four honking heavy AGM batteries and dollar panels along with our mesh nodes , and antennas for HF .
On sight the circus began antennas go up solar panels go up and stations and the commo trailer active . But the bands were not the best , hope y'all did well we will not know for a bit but hope our numbers were better than last year
           73's

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cockpitbob

#1
I'm a busy dad and had to skip Field Day this year, but it's been interesting watching the club's approach to it morph over the years.  A few years back we did the full deal:  6M tower, vertical and wire antennas.  Several tents, pop-ups and 2 car-ports.  Local Wi-Fi or mesh to link the computers together for coordinated logging.  GOTA station with literature displayed and banner by the road.  "Food and drink" crew with bbq grill.  Local politician stopping by.  After pre-setup Friday night a movie projected onto a white tarp.  We had people designated to hit a satellite, capture the ARRL's broadcast message, make some QRP contacts etc, etc, etc.  After a while we got tired of all that.  I mean literally physically exhausted.  The set-up and tear-down got to be too much, especially in the years with really hot weather or the year we had a down-burst relocate several tents leaving their poles bent.  The last couple of years Field Day has been in the club house with a generator and solar panels out the front porch ???.  The focus now is 100% on fun and socializing ;D.  Screw trying for points.  We used to have operator schedules for each station, but now it's work 'em if you want, or sit around and talk if that's what you want.

Edit:  Here in Massachusetts today it was in the high 80s with 85% humidity.  It's 10:20pm and raining now.  I'm kind of glad I skipped Field Day this year ;)

Bigguy49

I agree with taking a brake the yl and I took a 7 year field day brake and since we moved and become involved in our current club both of us have found renued enthusiasm for field day and the comradie , and our weather here in Texas was close to y'all's upper 80's and rain but we still had a good turn out . Grilled 20 steaks ,baked potatoes with all the fixings ! Breakfast was megas with tortilla's  Oh did I say we we enjoy eating too ..lol

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NCGunDude

Same site as previous 3 years, local EMS center. 6m opened up on Sunday around 10 a.m., made about 50 contacts or so up until 2 p.m.

We had 2 stations, one voice and one CW/Digital, plus 6m. More operators than radios. The local club has it down to a science, di-poles for all bands, no tuners, and a switch panel for running coax to antennas and radios. So when you work all the stations on one band, coordinate switching bands with the other station, and it's easily done at the switch panel.

The EMS center is going to let us setup a permanent station on site. We'll likely install an HF antenna in addition to the UHF/VHF already installed.

That makes Winter Field Day and ARRL Field Day both successes this year. Looking forward to next.