AFTER " field day 2006 " ---BAD points

[ai4ep]

Ok, field day 2006 is over with for your part. Did you operate, did you even turn the radio on ...and...when you did whatever you did do in relation to using cw or talking on the radio, what went wrong ? Tell me and the rest of us all about it....... !!

[ai4ep]

...so far so good...!!

Well, one thing is next time I have plans to use my EZ-Hang to string wire antennas in the trees, I'll have a spare lead weight on hand.

The one I had went up and disappeared on the first throw. I just hope it didn't fly over the house and hit the neighbor's cadillac.

[ky5u]

Went down to Field Day with the Jackson Amateur Radio Club. Bunch of nice folks! Had a great time and worked lots of CW. Great weather, good people, good condx, good food, and good equipment. Of course I miss the Five Flags folks in Pensacola. Harry, Gene, Hank and the lot.

[KC2ESD]

I'm getting Eaten alive by Gnats at the FD site. I'm back home for a few Minutes to get more equipment and a long sleeve shirt for night time ops. K2B/KC2ESD Clear

[KG4YUV]

It was too hot for one thing....that's all that went wrong!

[vk4xjb]

Quote[/b] (ai4ep @ June 24 2006,14:24)]Ok, field day 2006 is over with for your part. #Did you operate, did you even turn the radio on ...and...when you did whatever you did do in relation to using cw or talking on the radio, what went wrong ? # Tell me and the rest of us all about it....... !!
Field day is over? I though it only started 7 hours ago.

Listening to 20m. It is a mess. All the ssb way too close to each other. Ssb and sstv trying to compete with the same frequencies.

I am wondering what it sounds like your side of the Pacific. Are people not hearing each other because they are in each others skip zone or is it people just don't care and trying to operate ssb on top of each other?

[ai4ep]

xjb ---if you will notice at the top of the first post, it tells the TIME I Started this thread,,,which was before FIELD DAY ever began. I did that on purpose...along with another thread to accent the GOOD points of folks adventures with FIELD DAY.

It will be interesting to note about this time next weekend which threads of the two have more pages in it than the other, or will they be about the same ?

[KI4CIA]

Yea, we had the bad too ...


ALWAYS have a back-up rig, even for the Collins gear.


Keep most of the tarps near the Collins gear so it doesn't get wet when the monsoon hits.


Be prepared to quickly run and unplug everything, lower the 40 meter beam from the boom truck before the wind blows it over onto the food tent, and pray the lightening doesn't get worse while you hold onto the tents (while hoping the wind doesn't blow the tents and you into the next county).

The 40 meter CW station and 40 meter SSB station are going cause interference with each other, no matter how far apart you put them, you just gotta live with it.


Have more than one person who is a Collins radio gear expert and a computer guru on hand just in case problems exist simultaneously at two different stations.


And it could be our last Field Day in Tuscaloosa (mine and John's, not the club's). But that's still 12 months away so lots can still happen.

[KG4YUV]

Well when we figured out David's (WI4L) tripole was dead on the ends and sort of directional, I guess that could be bad but....

[vk4xjb]

If you want bad points.

I have already heard one argument between someone trying to have a chat and someone else calling cq contest.

On 14.230 and 14.233 sstv and ssb don't mix too well.

[KI4LFG]

At out field day site it started to rain for at least 2-3 hours, heavy to moderate most of the time with frequent cloud to ground strike, really close by. One about 15m away from the operating table and caused a transformer or somting to blow and arc across the pole. Another stike hit the water 20m away in the lake area. We of course had generators but the pole would cause problems still (see below)

Of course all out feedlines where ditched 15m before a drop of rain fell but it blanked out several hours of time.

The power crew came by after and did a "quick fix" which led to a very large interference problem with off the scale static noise. Quickly one of the operators was able to catch the bucket truck before it left and got the responce that it was just to get the power back on and took off.

We where also near a river with large amounts of boaters towing their boats up a hill with a stopsign at the top. With the heavy rain we saw several trucks burn considerable amounts of rubber to move.

Also when I listening to the W1AW broadcast I heard several people trying to still pull contacts.

[AG3Y]

I was actually working a pileup on 20 phone at my friends QTH ( 1E AL ) when the voltage dipped below the radio's minimum voltage level, and the rig reset ( blip ! ! ! ) Not only did I lose the pileup, but I don't even recall the frequency we were working on, so all the momentum was lost! Darn shame, too, because at one point, I had 5 stations coming back to me at once !

Oh well, I'm STILL learning !

Hitting the sack for a few ZZZZs, and then back at it again! 73, AG3Y@KE3Y

[w8cbc]

Today was wonderful! See my bit in the "Solo" thread. No planning, no help, just grab the gear when the time comes and go. Everything worked out beautifully except for the minor annoyance of my forgetting to bring a light.

The best of it is that I've proven to myself that I can do it on the fly.

[W2BBQ]

Numerous FD locations across the SE were severely hampered and even cut short by thunderstorm activity.

Here is a "bigger picture" opinion. I would favor seeing FD split in two. A northern one and a southern one. Let the northern states FD in the summer when conditions may be more pleasant for them. Let the southern states FD in the fall so they will have their cooler temps, far fewer t-storms and bugs. The non-contesting other country half can serve as contact stations from home for the half that is contesting, along with contacts amongst contesting stations as well.

Just because FD is practice for emergency work doesn't necessarily mean that you have to schedule a large scale practice activity during an uncomfortable weather season for a large chunk of the country.

[KC9ECI]

1.. Do not put the operating point (i.e. tent) on the lowest point of the area. #This is bad not if, but when it rains.

2. #Spread the antenna out a little more.

3. #Don't forget the gas, your coax, the weather radio, and assorted other bits and pieces.

4. #At midnight, non-alcoholic straberry bannanna smoothies hit the spot while standing around the campfire.

5. #Nothing beats finding PAC on 15M late in the evening and tossing it to the brand new general playing in his first field day.

We learned a lot of things, most of wich we will forget and have to relearn all over next year.

[WA9SVD]

Hmmm. Seemed to pull a "Double Murphy." http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif

Saturday would have been the only time to operate, but parental care didn't allow setting up any antennas, particularly the 6 M beam. Normally, Murphy would have a "Field Day," and 6 Meters would be open to the whole world, when one doesn't have their antenna set up. But at least during the afternoon on Saturday, there was not much activity in this part of creation, and I visited a local club that wasn't having much luck. Obviously, these are the results I'd expect if I HAD set up antennas...
I hope 6M showed some activity on Saturday evening and Sunday. I'm sure I'll hear about it!
,

[w8cbc]

Six was hopping when I got on air around 1930 GMT, died down in a bit under an hour, then picked up again after dark. Conditions for the first opening were great, I was getting into the northeast quite well with that bent dipole contraption of mine. The second opening, toward the west and southwest, was a bit of a struggle. There was some fair westward tropo between the two, and some E backscatter mixing into the tropo and local signals for awhile before it opened back up by Es.

I am continually fascinated by this band. 10 metres served as a good indicator for it yesterday.

[W4HAY]

The bottom 25 kHz of 20 was fun-filled bedlam just before closing. Reports flying back and forth and nobody sure who was working whom!

We kept The WX Channel on watching the radar map. Storms all around, but nothing hit until 30 minutes after everything closed down. Murphy must have been asleep.

[ke4pjw]

I was planning on setting up at the lake with my family. Instead I found myself in a dentist's office getting my wisdom teeth removed. Mepergan kept me off the air http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif

Hey, maybe when I get up a 75M antenna, I can talk about it on the air http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[W2LYS]

Quote[/b] ]Here is a "bigger picture" opinion. I would favor seeing FD split in two. A northern one and a southern one. Let the northern states FD in the summer when conditions may be more pleasant for them. Let the southern states FD in the fall so they will have their cooler temps, far fewer t-storms and bugs. The non-contesting other country half can serve as contact stations from home for the half that is contesting, along with contacts amongst contesting stations as well.

Just because FD is practice for emergency work doesn't necessarily mean that you have to schedule a large scale practice activity during an uncomfortable weather season for a large chunk of the country.

That would be a great idea, especially down here in South Texas. San Antonio moved their Texas Folklife Festival from August to May, and it's done much better.

[kb9khf]

Bad- My IC-251 going completely dead 10 minutes after set-up. We got quite a bit of rain. But the lightning stayed away, and the winds weren't bad.

Good- A couple of guys letting me take a swing on HF.

[KA4DPO]

Lightning, lightning, and still more lightning. Even when it wasn't close the QRN was high.

[wg7x]

KI4CIA notes:Quote[/b] ]The 40 meter CW station and 40 meter SSB station are going cause interference with each other, no matter how far apart you put them, you just gotta live with it.

It's interesting that you would mention that Melinda, because our club has an antenna and radio guru (Rich KR7W) who has given us a marvelous forty meter solution.

We have two (2) three element wire beams which consist of inverted vees for the elements and a catenary line which supports them. The "boom" of this antenna is a wire dipole supported by the catenary line.

With both of the antennas side by side and pointed east, there is NO interference or cross talk, unless one of the stations is using the dipole portion of the array. It works so well that the forty phone and CW stations were co-located in the same tent this year, and we worked FB! Over 400 Q's per station, all over the USA... It works very well.

So, keep trying! It is possible to run two stations on one band, two modes, it just takes a lot of thought and planning.

73 and Kudo's to Rich KR7W

Gary WG7X

[kc2prn]

Well this was my first "Field Day" and I had a blast. I was with K2EC 2F NLI group and we had alot of contacts. The older hams told me that since we were in the eastern part of the us we couldn't get the other states till after 11pm. The only thing that made Field Day sorry was that we had too much rain over this weekend. Close to 8-10 inches of the wet stuff. We really couldn't put our diapoles up because of the weather. But from what I heard, they (CQ station) put it up when there was no rain, thunder, and lightning. They had a better signal then than having the diapoles on the ground. I really can't wait for next year. Maybe I will get me a moble unit for christmas and forget the family. # http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/laugh.gif

[AG3Y]

We had a LOT of rain both days of the activity, and at times it was like a steam bath. The rain on Sunday was like a deluge at one point, but it didn't last too long.

I was fairly concerned about lightning, but being battery powered certainly helped to keep the juice out of the power lines, and the wire antennas didn't attract anything like a big beam on a 60 foot tower might have done. I did see some really tall telescoping masts sticking up over the top of the main structure, but nothing drew a charge like I thought they might be able to do.

Outside of the high heat and humidity, which is certainly to be expected at this time of the year, and an occasional reset of the rig when the power dipped a bit low, things went pretty nominally for us.

Hope you had as much fun! 73, Jim

[n8yx]

Quote[/b] (AG3Y @ June 25 2006,21:37)]We had a LOT of rain both days of the activity, and at times it was like a steam bath. #The rain on Sunday was like a deluge at one point, but it didn't last too long. #
It put down enough where we were to necessitate an early teardown... http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mad.gif

[KE5FRF]

Well, since our club had a high speed Morse guru working the CW subbands, I set up a PSK-31 station. The dissapointment in that was that for the most part, he and phone station that was set up vied for the use of 20 meters through much of saturday, and I had to TRY to work 40 meters on PSK-31, and found only a handfull of stations to work. Alltogether I think I snagged 20 contacts. Oh well, maybe next year will be better.

[ne3r]

Rain & no show operators. A lot of the rain missed us on Saturday, so, setup was ok, but 1am Sunday morning it started raining and it rained more than it didn't. The lightning stayed away just long enough to get things taken down. There were some operators that were scheduled to come out to our site that didn't make it so some of the stations had to go down for sleeping breaks.

Also, make sure your 2M preamp works before hand!

73
Joe
N3PAQ

[w8cbc]

All these rain and lightning comments make me realise that I was lucky. Clouds were building and I was hearing crackle but it didn't get me. That's the one thing that could have really screwed up my operation. I'm sure happy that it didn't!

[kj5t]

Oh, we had our problems. The biggest being that the club didn't put all the sections on the homebrew vertical and so after the contest started they had to go up on the roof of the pavilion and fix it, and that cut into our op time. Also the 706 that was on the GOTA station was having some troubles, lucky John (AC5CV) brough along his IC-746Pro for the GOTA station. Also Ed (KC5NT) brough his TS-570D which we replaced the TS-140S with the 570D for the pavilion station.

There was a little interface between the CW and SSB station, but not enough to really complain about. Other than the lost op time from the late start, everything was great (as you can read in my other thread). I think everyone who was there, either just visiting or operating, hams and non-hams alike had a great time.

[nq3x]

We at the Delaware/Lehigh Amateur Radio Club's W3OK (2A EPA) had a fantastic time! We had ops on the air the entire time, which hasn't happened in the last few years (or so I'm told; this is my first FD with this club).

We had good equipment and good ops, even though the air was so full of water it was easier to swim than walk to the port-o-let. Rain, rain, and more rain. Not so much as some of the rest of you got, but enough that the security of the mast stakes was questionable. Not a single rumble of thunder, thank goodness. We thought we saw lightning late Saturday, but it was fireworks over the horizon. http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Equipment:

Radios:
IC-738 (HF1)
TS-940 (HF2)
FT-857D (VHF)
Antennas:
40/80 trapped dipole; 40 NVIS loop (HF1)
15/20 Superantennas portable 2-element Yagi on 25' guyed mast & tripod; Cushcraft R8 vertical (HF2)
6m OA-50 "Omniangle"; lots-of-elements Cushcraft 2m yagi; 30' AB-155 guyed mast (VHF)

Each station had a laptop running CT for logging. Using interfaces, either HF station could run CW using CT (and did). Each station had Heil headset mics and foot switches. The VHF station used a Logikeyer and Vibroplex single-lever paddle for CW.
Power provided by gasoline-fired generator. Only had to refuel once.

Things to improve -

1. Antennas, HF. The Cuchcraft HF vertical is too big and complicated for a portable, emergency operation: It barely fit, disassembled into two pieces, into a 12'-long trailer, and has too many essential tiny bits which are too easy to drop and lose in the hurry to get on the air. More simple wires, less complicated aluminum. Also, there was interaction between the vertical and the HF1 wires, because they were too close together.
2. Antennas, VHF. The long 2m was useless, too big and too heavy. We managed to bend two sections of AB-155 beyond repair trying to raise the mast. Get a smaller (4 element?) 2m beam that still provides reasonable gain. The 6m omni was great - it was light, inexpensive, and played well. The problem? It was omnidirectional, on a band with spotty propogation at this point in the cycle. We need a gain antenna on 6m.
3. Operating positions. Since W3OK rented a site, it came complete with wooden picnic tables under the pavilions; perfect operating positions with awful seats. My rear end was numb after fifteen minutes, and my back hurt after a half-hour of leaning over the clipboard to get at the radio controls. Solutions include bringing a cushion, which will help my butt but not my back, or setting up the operating position on the end of the picnic table and using a better chair brought from home.

Worked quite a few contacts on 6m using the OA-50 up about 30 feet. We had to work like dogs for pretty much every contact, but we got some. Sometimes we even had to work half-SSB and half-CW to complete the contact; those contacts were logged as SSB only. Activity was spotty on VHF. I expected to hear many more stations on 6, and ran through those I could hear rather quickly; not having a directional antenna was a handicap, because we could hear quite a few stations we never did work.

We didn't have a computer for the VHF station at the beginning, either, because we all expected another fella to supply the whole kit and caboodle. We logged on paper for the first few hours, and after dinner I ran home to get my laptop, on which I had installed CTwin. I had even loaded the CW memories the previous week. But when I got there, I realized that we couldn't patch in the keyer because my laptop has no printer ports! USB only! Al, W3CE, came to the rescue with a USB-serial adapter, but we ran into another problem - it was the type with strips, not pins. No worries; we'll send by hand. K3YD grabbed his Logikeyer and Vibroplex single-lever, and we ran into another problem - how the hell do you turn the internal keyer off on an 857?

See, when we were in the planning stages, we decided not to bring the several-hundred-page manual for the 857. I copied out what I considered to be the most important stuff, like how to work the DSP and IF shift, but none of the other stuff. Remember, we were only considering this as a backup for the main HF radios, and that mainly voice. We just plugged in the single-lever, and it worked fine. But we had to send everything by hand, which made us feel old-fashioned indeed. I didn't figure out how to turn off the keyer function until about noon on Sunday!

My less-than-a-year-old Dell laptop was running CT just fine at home. When I got it to the site, though, I had problems getting CTwin to load. After four attempts, I got it running, and we were in business. At least until Sunday at about 0930L, when CT just disappeared. One second it was there and working, the next it just closed itself. So I loaded it again, and said "Hey! Where did all the contacts go?"

How the heck was I supposed to know that it only autosaved if you told it to, and that it only autosaved to the A: drive, which - and this is important - my laptop doesn't have!? Seriously, this failure made me feel like a total schlep. None of the guys said anything, but I felt - and feel - terrible, and you could see the disappointment on their faces. I figured out a fix this morning (the Monday After), and it's simple - just quit the program and reload it. That automatically saves the BIN file. But that doesn't help us now, and it certainly doesn't replace the more than a hundred contacts we lost between the time we stopped hand-logging and CT took a dump.

Had a great deal of fun running stations on 40m CW Sunday around lunchtime. Ran for about 30 minutes until somebody who really needs practice before he uses his bug started stuttering all over me. I kept trying to work him, and another guy started pounding "CQ FD" right over us without so much as a "CL?"

20 meters was an absolute nightmare, both CW and phone, with the stations packed so closely together that the notch and other filters on the HF rigs didn't help at all.

6 was dead most of the time, and like I wrote above we never heard a peep on 144. Does no one operate 144 in the northeast? Of course, I thought about passing some Qs the Monday After. http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Anyway, far more good than bad, and I'm already plotting for next year!

73,

N3OYA

[KB3LIX]

3 major problems this year

1. The guy assembling the Mosely Tri-Bander didn't look closely at what he was doing. It doesn't work very well if you connect the RG-213 center conductor to the grounded side of the driven element. Then to correct the problem, they took the Tri-Bander down and changed the driven element assembly. But this time, the replacement driven element had an SO-239 connector, and the cable had 'split leads'. So instead of putting a PL-259 on the cable, he tried hooking the 'split leads' to the new driven element. That didn't work for crap either. The Tri-Bander should have been the best antenna setup, it ended up being the worst. They tried using a tuner to reduce reflected, but that was a band-aid at best.

2. At 11:25 PM eastern time, the AC power went out at the site for a few seconds. We were battery powered, so no big deal.....Right ? # The router for the networked logging computers was AC line powered, not on a UPS. Best we can figure, the AC power blip caused corruption in the logging file in the network host computer. The backup file was also corrupted. Luckily, one of the computers was setup to automatically back-up the logfile as a separate routine, not associated with the logging program. We were able to download that separate file, so only a small bit of data was lost. We could not get the network to reestablish connection, so we had to run the computers as stand-alone terminals, which caused a few problems with dupes, but not many. It took about 2.5 hours to get the logging running again.

3. The weather was OK until about 10 am Sunday. The NWS was calling for severe thunderstorms and we had to tear down early. We quit at about noon local time, so we lost another 2 hours.

Total time lost, about 4.5 hours.

Positive side: The delta loop we strung up in the trees worked like DYNAMITE on 10-15-20-40 & 80. I tried it on 160, but it would not tune at all. If I read the MFJ analyzer correctly, on 160 the radiatiation resistance was about 1 ohm. Much too low for my tuner to handle.

Fun and Games !!

[KC8SQC]

Not having an antenna for 40m, and missing out on some great late night stations. After midnight, 20m PSK slowed but I could see a ton of stations on 40, and my attempt to tune a wire dipole was laughable at best. If only I had made that G5RV I planned on...

Also, I left Field Day with the same thought as last time, you really need some filtering with the FT-817. Was a nightmare to work any weak stations with all of the big guns blasting the AGC. Needless to say there is a package in the mail as of this moment!

Overall, the best year ever, and am looking forward to next!

73!
Paul
KC8SQC

[ai4ep]

never mind http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif

[KC2ESD]

Well At the Shore Points Amateur Radio Club's Field Day site on the North end Observation tower in Brigantine many things went wrong. The set up came together ok. The City of Brigantine supplied us with two generators one with a light tower. We supplied the antennas, radios, power supplies and food. We were on the air for 2.5 hrs when the radio generator ran out of gas. We called the city for more fuel but they would have to take the generator back to the city Yard to fuel it up. I told the Club President If you have a gas can (he lives not to for from the site) I'll buy the gas to get us up and running again. So our President went to go for the gas. I with the other club members plugged the power lines in to the Light Tower generator. we were up and running until I started to transmit on 40M with my IC-718, the power went out. I first thought my Power supply pooped out, i looked over to the 6M station and it was up and running but it was running off a battery charger and 2 12V car batteries. Then I heard the 20M operator say "what happen, I have no power". I go down to the light generator, found the GFI tripped, reset it and back on the air. Went back to work 40m, key the mike, say "this is K... power out again. My radio was tripping the GFI. Reset the GFI and ran with just 20M and 6M. The President returned with the gas, refueled the Honda 3500W Generator, switched the power lines back over to it. All Stations up and running ok. From 17:00 local time to 21:00 all was good, Radios and food. Oh it was not over yet.
#http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

#At 21:00hrs it started to Rain, HARD! Despite being under the cover on the first level of the tower, The rain blew side ways then started leaking through the floor above. We covered the radios with a tarp. We were of the air for 1.5hrs. I had a Hot Dog then the McGyver moment happened. I said what about hanging the tarp from the ceiling and angle it down to have the water run off. We put the Tarp up, dried off the tables and radios. The Club was back in the air. A Tech Ham came by, we let him operate 20M. He had a ball and now is going for his General Ticket. The HF hook is set. I'm operating on 40M when my Power supply's voltage starts to drop from 13.5Vdc to 9.5Vdc, my radio's display flickers then the radio turns off. A fellow ham had his power supply in his car. We swapped power supplies, the 40M station up again. It still rained. At 02:30hrs The four if us who were left were falling a sleep. Because it was raining so hard we put all the Radios, tuners, and power supplies in the back of my car. I stayed at the site by my self from 03:00 to 08:00hrs. I sleeped at the Focus Inn. It rained so hard I thought was was going to be washed away. At 08:00hrs the 6M operator pulled up. I laid back and let him go up. I had fun watching him look for his radio. I finally got out of the car and handed the IC-706 to him them set up the stations again. We made more contacts, more hams and visitors showed up. As 14:00hrs came the skies cleared up and the sun came out. All in all it was the most Adventure of all Field Days I've been to.

When I got home I dried out my power supply using a fan. Plugged it back in, back up to 13.5Vdc and contacted Lithuania on 20M that night.
One of the Member's cars, a Toyota, Died when he got home from the heavy rains, it's now in the shop.
Rick From K2B/KC2ESD