Imabug's journey into electronics and amateur radio as AB4UG and VA6BUG
I made it into another issue of QST! In the Dec 2016 issue among the 2016 Field Day results there’s a picture of me taken by Tom/AJ4UQ of me operating at the WA4USN digital station.
It’s small and pretty indistinct, but yep, that’s me.
Had another good time with Field Day with CARS on the Yorktown this past weekend.
Only had a little bit of rain for Field Day this year, but fortunately nothing severe enough to stop us from operating. New tarps this year worked great for keeping the stations and operators dry. About the only real snafu we had was one of the generators wasn’t working. Fortunately the other generator was able to power both rigs and computers without any complaints.
We had two stations set up, one for phone and one for digital/CW operations. This year I operated on the digital/CW station, doing PSK31 and RTTY on 15 and 20m. Doing digital contesting is a lot less tiring than phone contesting. Hearing that constant noise on phone can really wear you out.
Bands seemed to be a bit up and down while I was operating. There were many times where I’d see the middle of a QSO on PSK or RTTY, wait until it was finished for my chance, but then the signals would disappear. Made for some slow going at times. Sunday seemed a lot better. Not a whole lot of RTTY activity, but there was a lot of PSK going on. Had a nice little run going for the last 30 minutes of Field Day until we called it quits at 2PM.
I was even able to make a contact from home, with just the dipole on my PVC mast propped up against the ladder. Hardly an optimal setup with 3/4 of the ladder line laying on the ground, center up about 4m or so and the ends of the antenna staked into the ground. Didn’t really expect to be able to get out well at all, or for the radio to even tune the antenna, but it did and a station in NH heard me well enough to make the QSO.
Field Day this year was a little different this year since we were road tripping to Orlando.
On Saturday, we ventured out to the Orlando EOC to check out the Field Day operation there. They had a pretty impressive set up going with a big air conditioned tent and 10 transmitters running. We got there kind of late in the afternoon, and they were nice enough to set up a 10m GOTA station for us to get on the air with, but the band was kind of dead by then. We were able to give my sister, brother-in-law and nieces a good introduction to what Field Day and amateur radio is about though.
Sunday we hit the road back to Charleston after watching the SpaceX launch. Fired up the radio and started tuning around on 20m for the last few hours of Field Day. Got 3 contacts in the log which was good enough for me.
This was also our first Field Day together. Maybe next time we’ll do it again when one of us doesn’t have to drive.
Another Field Day has come and gone. I was able to get the laptops set up and networked just in time for the action to start.
This year, the 2PM start didn’t sound quite as chaotic or noisy as it did the last couple of years. I’m either getting used to listening through the noise, or it just wasn’t as busy this year, or both. I’ve seen other people mention that band conditions weren’t all that great.
I spent the first couple hours logging and keeping tabs on the network connection between the two laptops. Got in a bit of operating before the skies broke open and the torrential rain started. It was bad enough that we had to break down both stations and get them inside out of the rain.
Rain kept us off the air for a couple hours as more rain passed on through, but later in the evening the rain cleared out and we were able to set up one of the stations again.
I headed back home around 8PM and got back to the ship the next day for the last couple hours of Field Day. Weather was much nicer, and band conditions seemed to be better. I got in an hour of operating and was able to make 10m and 15m contacts into the northeast and northwest.
Looking at the counts in N1MM, we made somewhere between 600-800 contacts. Because of the wifi dropping out and having to break everything down for the rain, the logs on the two laptops got out of sync. Some operators also didn’t want to computer log, so there are some paper logs to add in as well. I think next year one of the things I’ll have to do is send out some instructions on how to do the logging, and make a cheat sheet available at each station.
Had lots of fun again this year, and looking forward to next year’s Field Day.
Another Field Day is coming up in a couple of weeks and once again I’ll be playing radio with fellow WA4USN club members on the USS Yorktown with CARS. I hope to spend a little more time operating this year.
I’ll also be paying closer attention to the generator and battery hook ups to learn how to set up the rig in the shack on portable power. Hopefully the weather is nice and the propagation is good.
