Field Day 2013 Part 1

Had a most excellent time at Field Day yesterday on board the USS Yorktown with CARS. I was put in charge of IT, which meant setting up the two laptops and a little local wifi network so that they could communicate and share a log file.

At 1800UTC (2PM EDT), the chaos the activity started. I spent the first few hours in seek and pounce mode (S&P), tuning around 40m at first and then moving up to 20 and then 15m. Was able to rack up a bunch of contacts, but it wasn’t easy. Thunderstorms to the southwest and in Georgia were causing static crashes because of the lightning. I’d be trying to work some strong stations, then 20-30db of noise would just wipe everything out on the frequency for a second or two. That went on for a few more hours, and then the rest of the evening was relatively clear. Then the problem went back to trying to pick out the Field Day exchange with neighbouring stations or groups of Boy Scouts stomping by behind us drowning everything out (the usual chaos).

I stayed on the Yorktown until around 10ish. A few other club members operated and got some pile ups going. I spent some time hanging out at the CW and digital station, taking photos and helping out with the logging on the phone station.

Field Day 2013
Field Day 2013

Field Day on the Yorktown offers a great view of the harbour and the Charleston penninsula while we’re operating.

Field Day 2013
Field Day 2013

This is the CW and digital station in action. Last year the CW station was set up in the club communications trailer out on the pier, but didn’t work out so well there, so it was brought up to the ship this time. The digital station was having a similar problem with noisy bands that we were having on the phone station so I don’t think there were too many contacts being made there.

Field Day 2013 CW/digital station
Field Day 2013 CW/digital station

Back for more Field Day fun today until 1800Z (2PM EDT) and then breaking everything down.

If you’re on the air for Field Day today, listen out for WA4USN. It might be me that’s operating!

Playing with the antenna analyzer

Finally got around to playing with the antenna analyzer I picked up at the Atlanta Hamfest. Came with batteries installed and a wall wart so it was ready to go out of the box. First thing I tried out were the inductance and capacitance measurements. Grabbed random wire wound inductor out of the junk box and put it against the antenna connector.

Random inductor on the MFJ 259B
Random inductor on the MFJ 259B

13 μH at 7.06 MHz. A pretty decent amount of inductance. It’s got a lot of windings and came out of a dead laptop power supply I think. Next I put a random capacitor on it. Capacitance meter told me it was around 216 pF. At 7.06 MHz, the analyzer measured 177 pF. Not too far off and something that I might expect at high frequencies.

Random capacitor on the MFJ259B
Random capacitor on the MFJ259B

The analyzer will also measure the amount of coax loss at different frequencies. Put a 75′ length of RG-8X to see what I’d get. At 7.06 MHz, a respectable 0.3 dB loss. At 146 MHz, though, 2.8 dB. Will have to make sure to keep the coax relatively short for whatever VHF/UHF antenna I decide to build.

Coax loss with the MFJ256B
Coax loss with the MFJ256B
Measuring coax loss at VHF with the MFJ256B
Measuring coax loss at VHF with the MFJ256B

Time to bring it in and try it out on the antenna. I know the antenna works really well on the 40m band, and the analyzer confirms it. SWR of 1.1 and 50Ω impedance at around 7.2 MHz, pretty much smack dab in the middle of the band. SWR ranges from 2.1 to 1.5 across the band.

Measuring the antenna with the MFJ259B
Measuring the antenna with the MFJ259B

Next I want to go through and record some more detailed measurements about the frequency performance of the antenna and maybe graph some things out. I’m sure that will look interesting.

I wonder what the analyzer will tell me about my HT antennas…Analyze ALL THE THINGS!

Barcamp session idea

There’s an idea for a BarcampCHS session brewing in my head. Something along the lines of open source software and amateur radio. There’s a fair bit of it out there, most of which is something I’m interested in learning more about (like GNURadio). What better way to make yourself learn about something than to try to give a presentation on it, right?

The idea isn’t very well formed yet and may or may not happen, but it’s there. I’ve got until November to figure it out. Plenty of time, right?

Field Day!

Another ARRL Field Day is upon us!

ARRL Field Day 2013 logo
ARRL Field Day 2013 logo

Like last year, I’ll be helping out with the CARS Field Day activities over on the Yorktown. Now that I’ve got a little bit more radio experience under my belt, I’ll be able to help out more with the preparations and will enjoy playing with the radios more than last time.

In preparation for Field Day, I’ve been given the task of getting the club laptops ready: installing updates and performing maintenance, updating the logging software (N3FJP), and getting them networked together so that operators at each station can see what’s going on.

TARC will be having their Field Day activities up in Goose Creek at the Marguerite H. Brown Municipal Center.

If you’re in the vicinity of either one of these Field Day locations, stop by and check out the amateur radio operations!

Working on 6m

Well, not only does the radio tune the antenna on 6m/50 MHz, but the radio and antenna seem to work pretty decently.

Spent about 3 hours tuning around on 6m in the  Central States VHF Society 6m Sprint contest last night in seek and pounce mode. Tallied up 10 contacts all from grid squares in the northeast plus one in Wisconson. Got some VA3/VE3 stations too. All of them were coming in pretty loud here. I came across several other stations that were just barely audible in the noise. I could hear something there, but not enough to try to work them. Most of the activity I heard was in the lower portion of the 50 MHz band, below 50.3 MHz. I went as high as 50.5 MHz, but didn’t go much higher.

A bit of Googling brought me to this ADIF mapping utility by K2DSL that puts my contacts onto a Google map based on the grid square. It’s kind of neat to see where the signals are coming from.



View Larger Map

I think I’ll add some kind of 6m antenna to the list of Things To Build for the summer. Will be interesting to see if I can make some more distant contacts with a dedicated antenna.