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Jim ClarkParticipant
something to ponderJim ClarkParticipantHere is a link to all the information I have been able to gather from the last 20 years of field days for the club:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-ze5mmF1vZp7UY9OC-hTCLzX_lvLkFjL/view?usp=sharing
Jim ClarkParticipantI am tracking what works and doesn’t work in my HF tinkering. For instance if you are wanting to keep logs and get confirmation of contacts, you need to be on an online logging service like ARRL’s Logbook of the World or QRZ.COM’s free online logbook. If you want confirmations, it helps to be on one where lots of people are confirming contacts. Parks on the Air gives me by far the best confirmation percentage as the numbers below show:
Svc POTA QRZ LOTW
#QSOs 108 83 122
noQSL 9 186 147
%QSL 92.31% 30.86% 45:35%Of the above options, the ARRL LOTW has the most cumbersome and needlessly complex interface for the user.
Jim ClarkParticipant“It worked well for us for the 2021 FD”
One reason to internally publish the full logs internally as soon as possible to the membership is so that we can see what worked and what didn’t work. The club still doesn’t have much evidence of what “worked” and did not work in 2021 FD.
Jim ClarkParticipantDoes anybody have any input on t-shirts for field day? I’m thinking burnt orange for the shirt color as there are several members with this color shirt already and it looks pretty good. The T-shirts would be for members, and vip guests.
Jim ClarkParticipantI would love any input on presenting the hobby to our field day visitors. Here is one off the top of my head. Next to a map that has push-pins inserted showing the locations of our contacts for the day could be a table with a 100Watt light bulb burning in a socket. An explanation about all the radios they see in operation are radiating the same energy as the exhibited light bulb.
I just made my first radio contact with a ham in Suriname. 3,122 miles from house to house. My radio puts out a maximum of 100 Watts and my antenna is a couple of scraps of household wiring. My television uses nearly 700 Watts just to show me what’s on YouTube today. How many visitors might be surprised at how little power it takes?
Jim ClarkParticipantHaving a tote board like this, posted in a prominent location can give visitors a better grasp of some of what they see going on around them.]
Jim ClarkParticipantThanks for the information Phillip. And thank you Dan Beard for accepting the Media Coordinator position which is going to be a key element in success next year. Looking over the rules from 2021, we can easily rake in 1,000 points before we even get on the air next year. Each contact is worth just 1 point, so that’s a pretty good head start.
I may regret this later, because I could be condemning my beloved wife to a life in prison for my murder, but I will to commit a downloadable spreadsheet showing all contacts and bonus points within seven days of the end of field day. This doesn’t mean our ARRL entry will be submitted that quickly because there is some parsing to be done to eliminate duplicate contacts, verify documentation for bonus points, etc. But access to the information from next year should be useful for planning in the years to come.
A Get On The Air (GOTA) station can not only score points, but can be a way for VIP guests and others to experience the hobby first hand while there. Young operators, licensed or not on our GOTA station, will add bonus points, so we might want to start a social media campaign early.
Meanwhile, Phillip mentioned an important resource for planning. We need input from members on what worked and what didn’t work in the past. Any suggestions made this early will be considered and carefully weighed to present the club’s best side next year. We need to look at previous year’s logbooks to determine the best times to operate each band so our operators don’t get bored. While not a point value, radio direction finding could be demonstrated on a schedule alongside satellite repeater demonstrations which count for 100 points per QSO.
Looking at both point value and public impact, we might have someone (working for Dan) on each shift who notices members of the public passing through and gets them to sign the visitor book. We had a pickup basketball game going on part of the day in 2021, but if we had a sign-in sheet and information table those basketball players would have added 100 points by signing the register. A tour the operation including each station should be available for any visitor signing the log. I was amazed at the amount of foot traffic we got at the Convention Center we should be able to raise awareness of the club this way. Two of the exhibits I want to see on the outside wall of Phillip and Kathy’s cooling station RV are a map of North America with states and provinces colored in as contacts are made as well as a large “tote” board showing the bonus and current points on various bands and modes.
I would also like to find some volunteers to put together some simple, one-board exhibits explaining things like the history of amateur radio in general, the history of amateur radio in local disaster relief (we have all the newspaper clippings thanks to the curating of Jerry Keisler (WA5KZA) so such exhibits should be easy to produce. Done right and carefully stored, these exhibits can be re-used and added to each year as well.
Jim ClarkParticipantThanks for opening this topic Dan. Yes, I have several Baofeng and two Wouxon radios. The comments below are just my opinion. Lots of people complain about the cheap radios and I believe they are the honest opinions of experienced people trying to be helpful. Among the complaints are; they are cheaply made and they transmit spurious signals. Making them cheaply is how they sell them cheaply. In an urban area, traffic levels are probably high enough to spurious signals may be bad manners, but I live in a rural area where the signals are very unlikely to be a problem for anyone. I suspect that the first time my Yaesu is dropped, it will emit some spurious signals as well. FM transmissions enjoy a concept called the FM Capture Effect. Briefly this means you only hear the stronger of competing signals, so someone on another frequency spilling a bit of harmonic is very unlikely to cause an issue (see below). In AM and SSB modes, ‘doubling’ can make transmissions unreadable.
There are a few advantages with cheap radios though.
- Each of my vehicles has a “go bag” for emergencies. Among other things, the bag in each vehicle contains a Baofeng radio with a better than OEM antenna. The battery is kept in an outer pocket of the bag so it can be rotated monthly with a freshly charged battery. I would hesitate to subject an expensive radio to temperature cycling or the extreme heat of the local summer days. At the price, I can have a Baofeng in every vehicle and building without stretching the bank account.
- Another advantage is to those of us who enjoy tinkering. Even without opening the radio, there are a lot of things an experimenter can do with a radio as long as the cost of a mistake is low enough. (see sample interface below).
BTW: The reason I own two Wouxons is the first one missed my shirt pocket while riding my motorcycle down the highway. The aftermarket antenna was bent, the heavy battery was smashed up pretty good. I had to back order the replacement battery, so I picked up a whole new radio while I waited. Checking the old radio with the new battery revealed it still worked. I waded into chest deep flood waters on Lamar Ave to get a guy out of his car as it floated into the CVS lawn, and my Wouxun was under water part of that time with no ill effects.
Jim ClarkParticipantThanks and keep up the great work!
Jim ClarkParticipantKeep plugging. My biggest frustration with the idea of activating a park at the moment is my antenna system leaves received signals down below the noise floor except certain windows of time. Since an activation/day starts at 0000 GMT, that means here, the day ends at 1800 (or 6:00pm). Looking back on my contacts, my antenna functions well on 20 meters from say 1300 to around 1500 and after that, any contacts I make are going to be on 40 meters.
I would love to set up for a 24 hour activation, but I’ll have to do more tinkering with my tangle of wires. As soon as I can get settled into my new north of downtown, I’ll be back in experiment mode and get back on the air
Jim ClarkParticipantJim ClarkParticipantI am doing some hunting from home and have learned a lot about how little antenna you really need to reach out. I have a project going on right now, but in the fall I hope to activate a few parks myself.
I would suggest anyone wanting to get on the air in HF, get hunting. I have embarrassingly simple antennas, but have reached state parks all over the country. Many of the contacts on my QSO map are POTA contacts.
Jim ClarkParticipantOops! There doesn’t seem to be a “cancel” button on posts. This was a doubled post, so as a compromise, I just cleared the text
- This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by Jim Clark. Reason: deleteme
Jim ClarkParticipantThanks Phillip. I was hoping it wasn’t just something I was doing wrong.
I just noticed on the POTA thread what you were talking about some posts require moderation as my post didn’t show up (possibly pending approval).
Lots of bugs to work out has been the norm since the inception of the ham radio hobby, doubly so with a new website going up as policies are established, tweaked and polished. Thanks to the web team for all the efforts.
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