KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

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A different kind of Field Day, but still a lot of fun

Posted: 29 Jun 2020 05:51 PM PDT
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/kb6nu...m_medium=email


So, how was your Field Day? Here, it was a lot different than usual. Our
club cancelled the big event and everyone operated in some way from their
homes. The bad thing, of course, is that Field Day wasnt the big party that
it usually is, but the good thing is that it gave me a chance to try some
things that I probably would not have otherwise. And, I still had a lot of
fun.
The setup

First of all, I decided to operate Class 1B-Battery.Â* I used my KX3, set to
5 W output and a BioEnno battery. Heres a photo of the station:



Not only did I power the station with a battery, I charged the battery and
operated from solar power. That box next to the battery is an DIYSolar4u
MPPT solar charge controller that was connected to this solar panel:



This solar panel was manufactured by a company here in Michigan called
Uni-Solar, which was a subsidiary of Energy Conversion Devices.
Unfortunately, this company went out of business eight years ago, but our
club made a big purchase of these panels at liquidation prices. The panel
and the charge controller worked like a charm, and I ended the day Sunday
with a fully-charged battery.

For an antenna, I used the antenna that we normally use at our GOTA
station, a 40-meter/20-meter fan inverted-V supported by the
military-surplus fiberglass mast. I set this up in the flower bed in front
of my house, trying mostly successfully to avoid trampling the flowers and
plants there.


How did I do?

I think that I did pretty well. In about 12 hours of operating, I managed
to make 225 QSOs, mostly on 40-meter CW. I did try a bit on 15 meters and
20 meters for a couple of hours on Saturday afternoon, but the bands werent
that good and no one was really hearing me. I made no contacts on 15
meters, and only a few on 20 meters.

One mistake that I made was to go to bed early Saturday night, so that I
could getÂ* up early Sunday morning. I went to sleep at 10 pm and got up at
4 am. I think that in doing this, I missed some prime operating time. I
should have tried to stay up till 2 am and then get up around 8 am. I did
get to see the sun come up, though, and that was pleasant.

Another pleasant thing was that even though I was running only 5 W, I was
able to run a frequency a couple of times before a higher power station
chased me off. Im guessing that I made about a dozen contacts during those
two periods.

About 10:30 am or so, I had just over 200 contacts, and I was thinking that
maybe I could hit 250. Right about that time, though, the activity just
tanked. I stuck it out until just before 1 pm, when I hit 225.

Funny story: Sunday evening, some club members got on 2m to share our Field
Day experiences. One guy mentioned that he operated FT8 and FT4, and after
deleting dupes, he had 226! That kind of frosted me. I probably could have
pounded out two more had I known he was at 226.
Bonus points

I did get to do some things to score bonus points that I dont normally do
at our club Field Day operation. Its not that I dont want to do them, but
theyre normally assigned to other members. For example, Jay, WB8TKL,
normally does the traffic handling. Well, this year, I originated some
traffic of my own. Of course, Jay is the one who took the traffic from me.
Thanks, Jay!

I also set up a public information table:



I set this down by the streetÂ* so folks walking by could take one of the
flyers underneath the plastic cover. A couple of people did, too, although
one of them was my next-door neighbor, and I kind of coerced into taking it.

As she was walking by on Sunday morning, I noticed that she was eying my
antenna. I called down to her, Dont worry. This is coming down this
afternoon. I also explained a little bit about what I was doing and then
got her to take a flyer.

I also:

Copied the bulletin.
Tweeted while I was operating for the social media bonus.
Sent outÂ* a press release (although I never made the news).


Ill also collect some bonus points for submitting my logs electronically.
What did I miss?

I did, of course, miss some of the regular Field Day happenings:

The food, ofÂ* course. Every year, someone seems to step up and put on a
nice Saturday evening dinner.
Hanging out with my friends, swapping stories about past Field Days.
Helping newcomers and non-hams make contacts at the GOTA station. Every
year, we get one or two folks who just take to it, and introducing them to
the fun of ham radio is just a blast for me.
Did I mention the food?


While this years Field Day was fun, lets hope that next year we can return
to a more traditional Field Day.

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