Amateur Radio Field day, THIS WEEKEND!!!

THe Mike and Key Amateur Radio club of Seattle ^ | Mike and Key amateur radio club

[Aric2000]

Ask 5 amateurs "What is Field Day?" and you will likely get a dozen different answers. Field Day is the premier operating event of the year and is held on the fourth full weekend of June. It is sponsored by the American Radio Relay League (ARRL). Field Day is a chance to take to the hills and fields. It's a test of our ability to communicate under adverse conditions, it's an exercise, and it's a contest, as Field Day stations try to contact as many other stations as possible during a 24 hour period.

Clubs and individuals operate from emergency and natural power sources, like batteries, generators, solar cells or even water wheels. You can operate from home, your car, boat, or plane, but you'll have to most fun setting up an emergency station and operating out in the field.

Field Day, technically speaking, is not a contest. It is intended to test emergency preparedness and demonstrate the fun of Amateur Radio to non-hams. Field Day is a great chance to spend a weekend in the outdoors with family, friends and Amateur Radio.

One weekend spent at even a modest-sized Field Day setup is probably equal to a year's worth of "normal hamming". The experience draws heavily on ingenuity and resourcefulness.

Newcomers and old timers are quickly pressed into service. Everyone must deal with the problems that occur in remote locations, but most of all we learn about antennas, radios, procedures, and Murphy's Law. ("If it's Field Day and it can go wrong, it will.") Field Day is teaching and learning for everyone.

Although you can operate Field Day by yourself, you'll miss out on a lot of fun. Contact any of the area club's representative who can give you the information relative to your participating with their club for Field Day. It is an experience not to be missed. MARK YOUR CALENDAR!

FIELD DAY 2003 The Mike and Key ARC is proud to have participated in the ARRL Field Day Event for over 26 years, the last 24 at Fort Flagler near Port Townsend. A unique site, holding our Field Days at Fort Flagler allows it to be a social as well as radio event that the whole family can participate in. 2003 ARRL Field Day Event will be held June 28th & 29th.

[Aric2000]

I am of course participating in the field day event this year, as usual, I am in charge of the 15 meter station for the Mike and Key Amateur Radio Club field Day, as I was last year.

I think it is important for the public to know about this event and how they might get involved or go to a local field day event to see how Amateur radio works.

Get involved, It's FUN, it's a public service and most of all you get to talk to people ALL over the world!!

[Aric2000]

PING!!!

[RadioAstronomer]

Way cool! Time to dust off my license!

[Aric2000]

Oh, and it is ALSO amateur astronomy field day, and because so many ham's are also amateur astronomers, we mix the 2, we will have 2 16", I think, refracting telescopes, very strong, so at night when 15 meter dies, I stay up and look at the stars!!

[Myrddin]

I've had a license since 1976 and I've never done anything on Field Day. Before I got married, I was involved in transmitter hunts every Sunday afternoon for almost a 3 year span. Cell phones took the allure from 2-meter phone patches. The internet did the same to packet radio. The restrictive covenants in my title make it impossible to put up any kind of decent low band antenna.

[cavtrooper21]

HAM PING

[lawdude]

"I've had a license since 1976 and I've never done anything on Field Day."

FD is a gajillion times more fun than T-hunts. Tiring, sometimes boring, always bugs, cold, heat, good or bad food. No matter what!

the lawdude who would be K7NO

[Aric2000]

That is slowly changing, ALL covenants will soon be obsolete as far as amateur radio is concerned. We have a federal bill going through that will give Amateur radio operators an edge.

It says that ANY neighborhood with CC&R's must make accomodations to amateur radio operators. Washington state is about to pass this same law, and hopefully the ARRL will have it through congress soon.

[Aric2000]

I LOVE field day, it has to be the greatest thing you can do with a Ham radio!!

I will be up the full 24 hours, as usual, and will help set up as many towers and stations as I can.

We will have 8 different stations set up, officially we will be competing with 6.

The other 2 will be a GOTA station, (get on the air) and a satelite station, we will also be doing some moon bounce, and some microwave line of sight communications across Puget sound. We tried it last year, but the microwave transmitter on our side blew out, hopefully it will go better this year.

[Aric2000]

I thought that this would be fun to post, a friend of mine wrote it and I got a ROYAL kick out of it, other hams I think will to.

This was published in our monthly newsletter, the Relay.



My Own Personal Field Day

Submitted by Mitch K7TUT

It occurred to me last month that there
was an alternative for me on Field Day. As many of you
are aware, I work Retail and as a manager I do not get the
weekends off. However, there has been a slight change
in my schedule and I will at least be on the air part of the
time.
The alternative? After work on Saturday I
was going to go to the mountains and work with Tyler’ s FT
817 after I hike a few miles in and set up camp. In order
to do this, I decided to do a dry run two weeks ago. I
packed a portable tent, food, etc. I was excited as I had
never done this before but since Tyler and his Mom were
visiting friends in Eastern Washington I decided that this
would be a great opportunity to get away. Most of you
know me. Most of you also know how my great ideas usu-ally
turn into great disasters. I promise that I will not dis-appoint
you as I know that you all seem to enjoy seeing
how much of a mess I can make.
I packed the truck and began up towards
Crystal Mountain. After a few miles I spotted a logging
road and turned in, drove a few miles, parked and
unloaded my backpack. I began walking, what I believed,
was North but who knows? I was not worried as I was
only going to go a mile or two into the forest. After 2 hours
of climbing I found a small meadow and set up camp. It
was about 5 PM. I got the tent up, wood gathered, and 20
meter dipole up in the trees about 20 feet. I started the
fire and sat on a log to have a nice meal before I got out
the rig and began to operate.
Unpacking the rig, I began to monitor the
20 meter QRP frequency. Hearing nothing, I began to
tune around the band. Nothing. No CW, no SSB, no
nothing! Hmmm. I checked the antenna and the connec-tion
and they seemed to be OK. I then changed to 2 me-ters
and I could hear people on several repeaters but the
signals seemed to be weaker than usual. I tried to call out
but I did not hit one repeater. It was at this time that I real-ized
that I was more South of all the repeaters and I
should have programmed a few more local repeaters into
the rig.
So here I sat with darkness approaching
fast, no propagation, and no local communications.
Maybe I should have checked the MUF earlier to see if 20
was even open. I learned later that it was not. After hav-ing
a fit and throwing a few rocks around, I decided that it
was a beautiful night, a little cool but here was some time
alone to recharge my batteries as I had been working a lot
of hours. I threw a few more pieces of wood on the fire
and began to relax. I decided to just enjoy the time. That
is exactly the time that I heard the first of many sounds. I
did not need any coffee to get my adrenalin going, I had
enough to go around for quite a few. The sounds I was
hearing had my imagination running in full. I could see
that huge cougar leaping into the meadow. Thankfully I
had Courage this night (that’ s the name of my Winchester
rifle) as I slowly backed myself into the tent with the barrel
of my gun pointed out. The thought now occurred to me
that I had not strung my food up into a tree as I had seen
in so many TV shows. I debated, as the noise grew
louder and closer, on whether to go back out and get the
food up in the air or to wait and see what happens. Being
brave can sometimes be seen as being stupid. I could lay
here and wait or try to get the food up in the tree.
As you may recall from my past adven-tures,
intelligence is not always my strong point. I crawled
out of the tent and grabbed the food and then remem-bered
that the rope was tied to the tree and to the dipole.
Since I was not going to be on the air I decided to use the
dipole to hoist the food up in the tree. Before I could do
that, the noises were now all around me. There was not
one but several all around. I slowly walked back to the
tent or maybe I ran. As I did, I got a glimpse of shadows
moving in the forest and they seemed huge. The fire
seemed to be keeping them away but the fire was going
down. What was I to now? I could fire off a shot from my
gun to scare them! As I began to cock the Winchester, it
jammed. I had the problem in the past but thought it had
been fixed by a gunsmith. Little did I know that it had not
been fixed properly.
I now had no gun, little fire, and animals
roaming around the campsite. That’ s when the first one
started scratching the back of my tent. I frantically started
trying to ping a repeater, any repeater! In my mind I was
thinking that if I talked to someone they would at least
know where to find what was left of me but no luck. I put
the radio down and tried to fix the rifle, no luck. I then de-cided
to at least try to see what was out there. I cracked
the flap on the tent and there it was staring right at me. It
was a few inches away and it was huge! A female rac-coon
with about 4 younger ones. They were happily eat-ing
my breakfast and snacks and tearing up the backpack.
What a relief as I knew there were no cougars and no
bears around. With that, I fell asleep.
Upon awaking in the morning after about
2 hours of restful sleep I scouted the remains. Everything
was all over the place. They had even chewed through
the coax so no 20 meters this morning. With that, I began
to pack up but could only take what I could carry as they
had destroyed the back pack. I was going to gather up
what I could carry when I heard another noise. Thinking it
was the raccoons I ignored it until I heard a branch break.
This was no small animal and it was coming my way. In-stead
of being curious, I decided that the best, most intelligent thing to do was to leave immediately. After a few
minutes, the forest became quiet again and I continued
the 2 hour hike back to the truck. After 3 hours, I decided
that maybe I was not going in the right direction. Since I
was higher, I decided to attempt to hit a repeater. I turned
on the rig and nothing happened. I then realized that I
had left the radio on all night. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I was now lost, had a jammed rifle, no food, no shelter and a
little water. I had several choices to make and I could only
imagine the Search and Rescue team having a good
laugh over a Ham with a dead radio in the middle of the
woods. I decided to change directions and continue on.
Luckily an hour later I found the road and 2 hours later I
found the truck, which had a flat tire. I’ m tired and the
trucks got a flat. I changed the tire and went home. So, if
you are traveling in the mountains near Crystal and come
upon a dipole, tent and sleeping bag, take it as I am not
going back to find it!
I have decided that even though my an-cestors
were Mountain Men in Oregon, that I did not get
one drop of blood from them. So, if you hear me on Field
Day and I tell you that I am portable. I guarantee you that
it will be portable from my front yard!
Have fun and maybe we will get to be with you all on Field
Day next year but if you plan on roughing it.....count me out

[Myrddin]

That's good news. I would love to be able to put up some decent antennas. I really want to put my old discone back up for general testing between 25 MHz and 1.3 GHz. A good long wire tied to my tuner would suffice for most of the kinds of low band I care about.

[Aric2000]

CQ field day, CQ field day.

Oh well, short lived thread, thought it might liven up a bit.

Oh well, have a great 4 days freepers, I am off to bed and then off to Field day tomorrow, cya on Sunday, if I'm not too exhausted.

[Myrddin]

My wife is a ham too. She really enjoyed the T-hunts. My doppler DF was a good piece of gear. I sent my display unit to Phil Lapsley in the East Bay area of San Francisco so he could track down a jammer. Never got it back. The PIN diode antenna array was inadvertantly left in the overhead area of the garage in the house I sold in San Diego. I'll have to build the whole thing from parts again. This time I'll just use a microcontroller to replace most of that pile of parts.

[Myrddin]

I had a good night of VHF DX in 1978. Using a Standard HT (1 Watt w/rubber duckie) on 146.52, I contacted a station in Santa Barbara from a hilltop in San Diego. It only worked because the guy had stacked 22 element beams pointed my direction and the path over the water was ducting nicely. On rare occasions, the 146.04/.64 repeater in Hawaii becomes audible in San Diego.

[Aric2000]

Well, since we're telling DX stories, Last year at field day, my brother in law and I took the night shift.

Basically drinking, eating and story telling, when as we're tuning around 15 we hear a station, JUST BOOMING in, the guy was in South Africa, this is like 3 in the morning, then we hear a guy in Autralia, and he's talking to the guy in South Africa.

So we give the guy in South Africa a shout, and he answers us, and then the guy in Australia answers us. We had a WONDERFUL 5X9 conversation going with both of them for over 30 minutes.

It was fun, I will never run into propagation like that again, but it was sure fun to get it.

That reminds me, I need to take a peek at the propagation charts for this weekend.

CQ field day, CQ field day.

Ft Flagler, Here I come!!

[PatrickHenry]

Thanks for the ping, but my only radio experience is listening to Rush. (I don't need a radio to receive messages from the Martians.)

[TechJunkYard]

This week is Lightning Safety Awareness Week, just so y'all know, and it's always a good idea to take a weather radio with SAME alert capability to your FD site just in case some weather moves in, as it frequently does here at this time of the year.

One of my repeaters will be connected to the Field Day conference on Echolink this weekend, and I plan to visit some of the local club FD sites, and work some other sites later from the comfort of my shack.

[longshadow]

Thanks for the ping, but my only radio experience is listening to Rush.

You should broaden your radio palate a bit; a simple portable radio for Short Wave Listening (SWL) is just the ticket.

Instead of being stuck with the standard predigested crap we get for news in the US, you can pick the swill of almost any major country you can think of: BBC in London, Deutche Welle in Germany, Radio Nederlands in Holland, Radio Australia, New Zealand, not to mention Fidel in Havana. Most of them broadcast at least a portion of their programming in English .

And, if you ever get bored with International broadcasters, there's no shortage of commercial SW outlets in the US who rent their air time to a wide assortment of of raving crackpots and lunatics who would make a CREVO thread proud. You can spend hours being thrilled by the exhortations about the evils of drink, the evils of sex, the evils of drugs, the evils of rock'n'roll, the evils of fluridation, the evils of evolutionism, and the impending joy of the imminent return of Elvis in a UFO.

And frankly, you're nobody until you've spent a night listening to what used to be the "Art Bell" Overnight Freak Show (for which you don't need a SW rec'r.)

So, get with it, quit listening to Martians voices in your head, and get on the radio bandwagon. It's a vast freak show that shouldn't be missed.

[PatrickHenry]

... quit listening to Martians voices in your head, and get on the radio bandwagon.

"Everything good that I have done, I have done at the command of my voices."
-- Joan of Arc

[PatrickHenry]

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