KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

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Operating Notes: testing a rig for Field Day

Posted: 24 Jun 2016 01:10 PM PDT
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/kb6nu...m_medium=email


Tomorrow, of course, is Field Day, and I am the head coach of our Get on
the Air (GOTA) station. Since Im located in Ann Arbor, MI, home of the
University of Michigan, Im calling myself the Jim Harbaugh of Field Day.

Were going to be using the clubs IC-746PRO at the GOTA station, and so just
now, I was down in the shack, making sure it still worked. The first thing
I had to do was to replace the lugs on the power cable. I dont know what
kind of power supply they had connected it to last, but it had some lugs on
it that had some really big holes.

After Id done that, I hooked up the radio, connected the antenna, and
started tuning around the 40m phone band. Geez, are conditions bad right
now. I really couldnt hear anyone, and after calling CQ on 7225 kHz a half
dozen times, I moved down to the CW portion of the band.

There, I had some luck working stations, but the signalsÂ*were very weak. At
least, though, I convinced myself that the radio was working. After working
a couple of stations, I decided to try phone again.

Tuning around, I ran across AC9LX on 7178. Signals werent great, but we
could hear each other, and we had a short contact. After our contact ended,
N8BUS called AC9LX. Hearing N8BUS got me excited, because not only is it a
callsignÂ*that spells a word, its an all-time new one for me.

After his short contact with AC9LX, I called him, and we talked for a
while. Since he lives just southwest of Columbus, OH (home of Ohio State
University), we traded friendly jibes about our respective football teams.

When we said 73, I got a call from Tim, WB2PAY! He had heard me talking
about collecting QSL cards from stations whose callsignsÂ*spell words and
offered to send me one of his. How cool is that? PAY happens to be another
all-time new one, so in the space of 15 minutes, Id worked two stations
whose QSLs I can add to my collection. Field Day is already a success in my
book!

Remote operation

A couple of years ago there was a brouhaha about getting DXCC credit for
contacts made using remote superstations. I contributed a little to that
controversy with my blog post on the subject. To recap, I think that these
remote superstationsÂ*are pretty cool, but Im not sure that operators should
get DXCC credit for contacts made while using them.

I did, however, hear about one use for them that I thought was pretty cool.
Mark, W8MP, subscribes to one of these services, and he was telling me
about how he recently used one of these stations.

As it turns out, a friend of his son was putting up some kind of antenna,
and when he found out, he volunteered to contact him using one or more (I
forget exactly) of these stations. These contacts helped prove out the
antennas, and I think, made great use of this service.

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