High Sierra Field Day Group

It’s been awhile since the site here was updated, but we have done Field Day each year. This year we recently lost a member, Tom KQ6DV. See you on the air!

Making a Late Update on Field Day 2021 here, we did our second ‘rona type Field Day with a small group actually onsite. The rest of the participation was from home stations. When we do this type of operation we minimize sharing and cooperative stations and each set up and operate our own gear. Interactions are outdoor and with separation.

I started with the IC-705, AH-705 tuner and a not so random wire chosen to avoid half wavelengths on ham bands, and four short radials for the Friday Evening bulletin copy. This wire is about 5/8 wavelengths on 20 meters which is usually our best band for the bulletin from W1AW. Copying the ARRL Bulletin on Friday is always one of our goals as this allows us to focus on operating during the Event Period on Saturday and Sunday. The West Coast bulletin station does not transmit on Friday so this means we have to copy Newington which can be a challenge here in California. We encourage multiple of our stations to try bulletin copy so everyone gets a chance, and we may get a copy on at least one station. I used a Raspberry Pi running FLDigi and was able to copy the bulletin on several digital modes. CW was recorded but with a message this long it is nice to get it on digital modes and not have to copy CW accurately for so long.

On Saturday I set up the Elecraft K3S (still waiting on my K4), and Frank N6OI set up his TH3JR suspended from the trees with lines over the trees which we put up with Pneumatic Antenna Launchers (www.AntennaLaunchers.com www.akbeng.com) as we usually do.

Mike, Cal and Oliver set up their stations on the ridge where we camp for Field Day and each operated their own setup. Oliver made a notable contact on 10 GHZ. We did use the GPS NTP Time Servers that we built after 2020 Field Day and had 2 servers on our wireless network feeding time into the logging software (www.FDLog.info).

Several stations set up at home and contributed their scores via the ARRL Field Day Log Entry site.

It was a good Field Day, and no one had any ‘rona issues afterward.

So what’s the next project? Time to start planning for Field Day 2022!

73 de Alan, w6akb

Organizing HSFDG FD since 1976…

A few of us have been experimenting with small, low cost NTP servers for field and home use based on GPS and small microcomputer boards such as the Raspberry Pi. We’re putting together an article that explains our experiences with these, and spoiler alert – they work! A preliminary version of the article has been uploaded here: Portable Network Time Servers

After Field Day I make a list of the things we’d like to do better next year. One thing that has come up a couple of times is better computer clock synchronization. Since we’re basically off-net we don’t have access to the network time services. In 2014 I designed and built a GPS based clock that provides FDLog with accurate time which it shares through the wireless network to the other FDLog programs, so the log is already synchronized. This was fine but it doesn’t set the computer’s clock so FT8 wasn’t getting accurate time. So Frank, Eric and I have been looking into and experimenting with Pi based GPS – NTP servers. We have a couple of them working now and are writing a document describing what we learned. There are many recipes on the internet for these but most are out of date and fall short of handling the completely standalone case which turns out to add a few new issues to solve. Look for that here soon.

Field Day itself was interesting with built in social distancing we each did our own stations and spent the whole weekend within 500 feet but not within 6 feet of our friends. The bands were decent but it was hard to break through the 1d working 1d pileups. Maybe they should give more points for portable stations, something to make folks listen a little instead of not bothering.

It was good to get out camping and into the fresh air. Now I’m digging back into making Antenna Launchers, come see us at http://akbeng.com since Pacificon won’t happen this year.

73, Alan, w6akb

Welcome to Field Day in Pandemic mode. Our group decided to modify our plans for Field Day and proceed with a Socially Distant Camping Field Day. Each “family group” formed their own station, equipment was not loaned and spacing was maintained. We bypassed the potluck and after FD Burrito Bar and each brought our own food. We set our chairs further apart and each operated our own stations. The other members of our group operated from home. ARRL responded to our request for allowing groups to cover more than 1000 feet by promising to aggregate group scores from members into a separate category. We all made it home safely and have some new and unusual memories to add to our collections.

Alan, w6akb