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I am starting this thread to discuss the 2023 Summer ARRL Field Day to be held by the RRVARC at the Paris Love Civic Center Pavilion.
Let’s all talk about it here and see if we can better coordinate things.
Charles WA5VHU
Due to the typical Texas heat during Field Day last year Cindy and I rented a small RV camping trailer to operate from. It was really nice but a bit of a hassle renting and towing the camper.
This year I think we will try something different. One of the problems operating out of a camper or a tent is you might as well be inside a cave somewhere. To avoid that, we are looking at a bubble type vendor tent with plastic windows. We can operate from inside the bubble with pretty good visibility and still air condition the bubble. For sleeping we will use a small camping tent and either move the air conditioner over or run a fan-blown flex vent between the tents.
Any thoughts or suggestions?
73
Charles
I like the idea of the bubble vendor tent. 😃 As a reminder we have a pull out sofa sleeper in the RV y’all are welcome to use. Hopefully it won’t be so hot this year. Yeah, I know wishful thinking. 😂
We wound up with a 10′ x 10′ pop-up canopy with clear plastic window walls on all sides for our operating area. You can see out and in fairly well, faces are a little out of phase looking as people walk by but it’s better than being closed up in an RV or a regular tent with little or no windows.
If the picture looks confusing it is because we set the canopy up inside our driveway carport so you can’t see the top of the canopy.
You can see the 12,000 BTU air conditioner on the floor on the far side of the canopy, hopefully it will keep us cool enough in the heat of the day.
The red tent will give us some privacy and will be setup at night for us to sleep inside the air-conditioned canopy. We have a good quality REI camping air mattress and a queen size sleeping bag. The tent will be taken out during the day and extra chairs can be used for others to cool off.
Looking forward to keeping cool again this year!
73,
WA5VHU
We are planning to put halyards on the pavilion and the two parking lot light poles so we can easily raise and lower two HF wire antennas.
I will bring the wire, insulators, rope and open air twinlead for the two antennas. I plan on using the antenna on the west side, the one on the east side is available for anyone else to use. You will need to bring your own wide-range tuner, the one inside your radio likely won’t tune the antenna properly.
These two antennas are a random length at all Ham frequencies HF-6 meters as a semi-resonant antenna on a multiple wavelength can be difficult to tune.
Of course, you are welcome to put up and use your own antenna, we just came up with these as a quicker and easier way of getting on the air.
Please see the illustration below.
All,
Charles and I have just concluded a wide-ranging phone conversation. One element of that conversation was clarification on how we might do something similar we got an email about. A group Wyndell Ferguson associates with is going to set up a VHF/UHF “Bring Your Own Handy-talkie Radio” station. Their idea, and one that we think is worth emulating, in our case with a station with an antenna raised up with Kathy and my scissor lift, with a table and chair, power and antenna adapters – YOU bring YOUR handy-talkie and we will have people there able to help you to get connected up to use your radio at Field Day 2023.
The plan is for people to use their radio to call on a national calling frequency. If you have a dual band radio you can even make calls on VHF and UHF. We will provide a laptop to log contacts. Bring you and your radio and a charging cord if you will stay for awhile.
With your radio on simplex VHF and the national calling frequency 146.520 you can call CQ Field Day W5W and see if you get a reply. If you do and your radio is a dual band radio, ask your contact to try and call you on UHF frequency 446.000. We will further explore frequency options, but there are two.
Whether you have a BaoFeng, Kenwood, Yaesu, ICOM, Anytone; no matter the radio, please bring it out and we will get you onto the air. Operate and learn your radio, then move over and work with someone who is running an HF rig!
73
Phillip
Bring your own talkie and operate Field Day!
You can make Field Day contacts on 2m and 70cm FM with your portable.
There will be quite a number of stations on the air on the common simplex frequencies on Field Day.
Remember – contacts through repeaters are not allowed, simplex only!
We will supply:
• Omni vertical 2m/70cm base station gain antenna 40’ up in the air.
• 45 watt 2m/35 watt 70cm FM amplifier.
• Coax cable, jumpers & antenna connector adapters.
• Logging computer.Be sure to fully charge your battery!
Cindy is bringing her IC-7300 for our HF/6m Field Day station. I was planning on bringing my FT-991A to have a backup radio so I plan to put the radio on the Bring your own talkie and operate Field Day! table so when someone isn’t using their own radio the FT-991A can be used to make 6m/2m/70cm all mode contacts. Remember, we get one VHF and up free station that does not count against our number of transmitters so we might as well use the freebie.
We need operators!
We need operators!
Charles WA5VHU
Please tell me if you are going to operate Field Day with your own transmitter.
When we go on the air Saturday morning we will be stating our class and number of transmitters and our section. One recent year we were told we would have 4 stations (transmitters) however only 2 stations showed up. This crippled our number of points by putting us in a higher category because there is no provision for changing the number of transmitters after starting our Field Day operation.
So please let me know at least before we go on the air if you will be bringing and operating your own station.
And for those that just show up unannounced with their stuff you will have to get one of the other stations to go off the air before you can operate if your operation would put us over the number.
So far we will have:
Jim WA5QEC will bring his Yaesu and use the east parking lot dipole antenna.
Mark W5PTX will bring his FT-991A and his end-fed antenna.
Mel K5KEY will bring his HF radio and a vertical antenna.
Cindy KD5CCB/Charles WA5VHU will bring her IC-7300 and use the west parking lot dipole antenna.
Chris will bring her HF radio and use a TBD antenna.
This put us a 5 stations so far.
Charles WA5VHU
Here is the latest artist conception of the Field Day antenna layout. Please give it a look over and let me know what you think.
I added the other antennas. Note the man-lift parked next to the pavillion for the Bring Your Own Radio position.
I have a super antenna with all the modifications if anyone needs to use it for field day.
http://newsuperantenna.com/ I also have one of the speaker tri-pods to mount it up a little higher.
An update to the artist deception of the Field Day antenna layout.
I changed the WA5YPO antenna from the end fed to the Superantenna that Wyndell K5WJF has offered. This will make a simpler and quicker setup for Chris.
Charles WA5VHU
Wyndell,
Yes, your Superantenna will provide Chris WB5YPO with an antenna she can use, please bring it!
Thanks & 73
Charles WA5VHU
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