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Field Day 2006

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Steve Maurer

Sat Jun 24 2006, 03:44PM

Registered Member #133 Joined: Fri Feb 10 2006, 10:27PM
Location: Pensacola, Florida
Posts: 47

This year's amateur radio Field Day contest starts today (Saturday, June 24th) at 1800 UTC and continues until 2100 UTC Sunday (June 25th).

Information on the Field Day contest event may be found here: Field Day.

What is the objective? Make two-way contacts with as many stations as you can on as many of the amateur radio bands as you can. An additional objective is for amateurs to practice using emergency powered equipment and to practice setting up the equipment outside of its normal operating location. Many amateur radio clubs set up equipment in open fields (hence the "field" in Field Day), use generators or batteries for power, and use temporary antennas. Field Day promotes the practice of emergency use of amateur radio equipment. The event is wide spread and you will find that there will be a lot of amateurs on the air this weekend.

Even if you do not have a license, it still may be interesting for you to listen in on some of the contacts that are made if you have a receiver that is capable of listening to the amateurs bands.

For those of you with licenses, maybe I will hear you on the air this weekend...

Steve, N8WQF

Dave Marshall

Sun Jun 25 2006, 03:46AM

Registered Member #16 Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 02:22PM
Location: New Wilmington, PA
Posts: 554

I'm operating mostly on psk31, 20 meters under the club call WR4MG. Maybe I'll hear you guys out there. I've been out all day, going to shower, change, and head back out for the rest of the night.

EDIT: Final Tally
1065 seperate contacts
838 unique callsigns
every US state and territory
all but 2 canadian provinces (N. Territories and the subsection for Newfoundland/Labrador)
all but 1 US subsection (San Francisco)
33 Countries (including Russia, Poland, Japan, Australia, and the Phillipines among the more interesting)
Estimated score: 2900 points as a 4A station.

We did this using 4 transmitters, all with wire antennas on bands from 160 meters (1.8Mhz) through 6 meters (52Mhz)

My Personal count:
295 contacts logged in a total of 19 hours and 8 minutes of operating
All bands 160-6 utilized
Worked 48 US states (Hawaii and Nevada were worked by someone else)
Modes: PSK31, CW, and SSB Phone
9 cups of coffee, and 6 bowls of chilli consumed

I spent an entire hour hunting for one damn state! We were down to 60 minutes left to operate in the contest, and we were still missing Wyoming. I called CQ WY for about 30 minutes before a fellow from Oakland CA told me what freq to find a WY station on. It took me the next 20 minutes to get through to that station with all the noise on the bands. Good times! I wish I'd done an audio capture.

It was a good field day! Pictures to come shortly.

73s!
Dave

Steve Maurer

Tue Jun 27 2006, 01:27AM

Registered Member #133 Joined: Fri Feb 10 2006, 10:27PM
Location: Pensacola, Florida
Posts: 47

Dave â€“ congratulations on job well done. You made a serious number of contacts there. Letâ€™s see your pictures!

We operated under the club call of W4VIY (northwest Florida) and set up at Carpenterâ€™s Park in Milton, FL. There is a high probability that we made a contact with your club at some point, as you are just a little northeast of us.

Two HF dipoles were set up, an HF beam on a 30 foot tower with a rotator, a vertical HF on a 15 foot tower, and a few small antennas for the VHF. The weather was a bit warm during the day (around 100 F with high humidity), but was quite comfortable during the evening.

4 transceiver stations
4 generators (one that we used and three spares) â€“ Generators come in real handy here during and after hurricanes and tropical storms.
4 solar panels
2 deep cycle marine batteries
1800 watt ProSine inverter
5 coolers of beverages
1 cooler of food
Lots of commiserating with old friends and newâ€¦

We ran on solar charged batteries for about an hour and made around 50 CW contacts on batteries (needed 5 alternate energy contacts for an extra hundred points). I made up all of the wiring harnesses and connections during the contest (Saturday night) and set things up Sunday morning.

I didnâ€™t find out our points total afterwards. Most of us were quite tired by the time we tore down all of the equipment. Iâ€™ll have to ask one of the other club members for our statistics.

Iâ€™m already waiting for next year!

73â€™s,
Steve

Steve Maurer

Sun Jul 09 2006, 06:19AM

Registered Member #133 Joined: Fri Feb 10 2006, 10:27PM
Location: Pensacola, Florida
Posts: 47

Steve Maurer wrote ...

Iâ€™ll have to ask one of the other club members for our statistics.

Here are the unofficial Field Day results just in for W4VIY:

ARRL/RAC Section: NFL Class: 4A
Participants: 19

QSO points: 2,382

Bonus Points:
100% Emergency power: 400
Media Publicity: 100
Set-up in Public Place: 100
Information Booth: 100
W1AW Field Day Message: 100
Natural power QSOs completed: 100
Submitted via the Web: 50

Total points: 3,332

Cheers,

Steve, N8WQF

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