High Sierra Field Day Group

We had a great Field Day this year. We tried out a new site along highway 88 in the Sierras and put up some new antennas. The group was smaller than usual due to calendar conflicts this year. Attendees included Mike F, Rick, Brad, Alex, Dawn, Alan, Cal, Eric and Dave. Ken went with the SBARA group, Oliver had a calendar conflict and Frank was on call and had to stick close to home. Glenn and Judy were planning to come but Judy did not feel up to it that day. Rich and Mike C wanted to come but had too much work to get away. Chris D really wanted to come also but just could not get away long enough to do so.

We had some new equipment to try out this year. Alan brought a Spiderbeam (actually finished building it), Mike F built a 40 meter double extended Zepp, and Cal brought a “new” trailer. Mike F’s Icom Pro III was also new. Eric had a new digital mode interface - the “Navigator”, and a new Icom 7000 rig set up in his trailer, a very clean and comfortable station, and he probably set a new group record for digital contacts on Field Day. He used an AH-4 autotuner and an L type antenna launched into the trees.

Mike’s double extended Zepp worked very well. He was greeted with an immediate pileup on 40 meters as soon as he turned on Saturday, and he worked a lot of stations. Alan’s Spiderbeam worked well on 20 meters, though it is suspected that one or more of the wire elements are not cut properly since the SWR on 17 and 15 were not up to spec.

The pnemuatic launchers worked well, and were used to put the beam up between two trees, as well as the wire antennas.

Alan brought a TGElectronics dc voltage booster for his station (Icom Pro III, TenTec Hercules amplifier, Spiderbeam). The ProIII does not seem to be sensitive to the voltage, so it may not be required, but it worked well and did not generate noise in the receiver. The DC was provided by a pair of 100AH Dynasty AGM batteries in parallel, and charged by a Progressive Dynamics 60A RV power supply and a Honda EU2000is generator. In the past this power system has not generated noise, however in this setup some noise was noted, and more work needs to be done on this.

Cal used some vertical antennas and a TS480 and made quite a few contacts.

Dave brought his great callsign that we used (W6PS, or W6 Power Supply) and some excellent operating skills. He also brought some radio gear but there was so much gear already set up he didn’t unpack it.

Rick returned after a long absence from our FD expeditions, and logged a lot of stations.

Alex and Brad teamed up and made a batch of contacts all over the country, and a few foreign stations as well. Alex had a good introduction to Ham Radio.

We used a WiFi network and FDLog to do the logging. The software worked fine, but we did have a few glitches with the WiFi network. Make sure to set the DNS leases short (5 minutes) and provide battery backed up power to the WiFi router to reduce the problems associated with the network bouncing up and down. Next year we will move to LinkSys WRT54G type routers running DD-WRT, and have several configured the same for backup, plus DC power and good antennas.

We had a great BBQ saturday night and swapped old and new stories, taking a break from the bands.

Thanks to all and we had a great time. Looking forward to next year!

73

AlanB

Field Day is only two weeks away. It is time to check those lists, twice, and prepare.

• Review the Field Day Handbook
• Make any last minute procurements
• Change the Generator oil and test it
• Charge and test cycle the batteries
• Make sure the tent poles and stakes are with the tent
• Inventory the cables and don’t forget the Microphone and Key
• Get the maps and GPS ready
• Find the Instruction Manuals and pack them
• Finish those last-minute antennas and other projects
• Practice those CW and Digital modes
• Learn the Logging, Radio Control and Digital mode software
• Make sure the Radio, Laptop, etc are in working order

See you there!!

The new LED flashlights have come a long way. At Pacificon Frank found a very bright and very small LED flashlight. Using a CREE XR-E 3 Watt LED, it puts out about 160 lumens, amazing for a 7/8 by 3″ light. This is far more than a 3D Maglite, and is about double the light from last year’s 3W Luxeon LEDs, so this is a significant increase. These particular flashlights are available from LedWholesalers.com, but there are many similar products on eBay and elsewhere. There are many models that have different features. One good source of flashlight information is Candlepower Forums.

Our New web page on LED Flashlights

Pacificon was excellent, and we saw quite a few FD Group folks there including Frank, Dawn, Chris, Mike C, Eric, Glenn, Ken, Oliver, Cal, Bob I, and probably more that I’m not recalling right now. We took some photos and we’ll set up an album for them on the gallery here shortly.

The Pacificon Antenna Forum on Friday was excellent as usual, and I encourage folks who are interested in antennas to attend that forum if they can.

We do have a new photo gallery here on the website, and encourage group members to post photos of group outings and other interesting stuff. Contact AlanB for getting set up to post.

The Pacificon HFPack forum went well, with Ken’s organization and help from Bill, Oliver, Eric and others. The gathering the park Sunday afternoon was met with wonderful weather and some good propagation for a few HFPack contacts.

Field Day is long over, and we are preparing for CQP and Pacificon. This year’s FD was a bit different, Cal brought his station and beam, and Alan put his KW station in the trailer. Mike set up the big wire antenna again and tuned it differently. Brad’s balloon popped way too soon. Bob brought his motorhome and set up VHF in there.

I just put some photos up in the new Gallery. See Link on the lower right.

Field Day is only two weeks away. It is time to check those lists, twice, and prepare.

• Review the Field Day Handbook
• Make any last minute procurements
• Change the Generator oil and test it
• Charge and test the batteries
• Make sure the tent poles and stakes are with the tent
• Inventory the cables and don’t forget the Microphone and Key
• Get the maps and GPS ready
• Find the Instruction Manuals and pack them

See you there!!

The FD Planning went well, see the notes in the wiki (in the members only area). Plans for FD 2007 are shaping up nicely. Discussion is in a private Google discussion list this year.

A page has been added to the wiki with links to other FD group web pages that have useful information to review. There is an FD Primer, and other FD planning documents.

MikeF is going to make another site survey looking for an improved site.

Welcome back to our corner of the internet. Lots of things have been happening. We had a great fall campout. We are starting to think about Field Day, and the next campout.

The all-important question is, where do we go this year for Field Day? Should we go to the 2006 site again, or try to go back to an earlier site.

We also need to schedule the Field Day meeting. Frank offered his place at one point, so we’ll see if he still wants to do it and what weekends would be available.

Enter the wiki for more details!!

The Wiki content is growing. There are some nice collections of links on ElectricBikes, and GpsDisciplinedOscillators. The Fall Campout planning is progressing at it looks like there is enough interest to hold one.

I have added a Wiki to this WEBlog. In the Wiki you will find lots more information and discussions about Ham Radio, Field Day, and related subjects. Wiki’s are designed to make it easy to add and manage web content, so there will be lots more as time goes on:

 Enter Wiki Here or use the Links/Enter Wiki link in the right hand column.

Field Day 2006 is over now, and after having some problems finding a site we had a great Field Day! The new site was above Sonora in the Stanislaus National Forest. This year it was hot, and due to the late rains the mosquitos were a bit thick, but we set up and had a good Field Day. Mike WA6ZTY set up a bobtail curtain for 40m, we put up Glenn WB6W’s 2 element steppir at about 50 feet, and various other dipoles etc. The trees at this site are a bit shorter than we’re used to, most in the 50-75 foot range. I used the CSV17 launcher for this, and had to run the pressure way down to avoid overshooting too many trees.

We had some minor problems with the Access Point and went over to the backup, but the main one was working when tested later, so it must have needed a rest…

The FDLog program worked well, and the new Q editor was lauded for convenience. More improvements are on the way already.

We had some noise from battery chargers and generators that we’ll have to look into next year more carefully.

We used Mike K3MC’s Hercules solid state 500w amp. It broke through some of the pileups and made some for us. It did give some problems to at least one other rig with apparent overloading, but other rigs did not seem to mind.

The bands were a bit tough, and the Bobtail didn’t seem to be working quite right so the overall Q count was a bit lower than usual, but it was fun and as always we learned a few new things.

Next year perhaps we’ll have built some lightweight monoband beams, and a Spiderbeam to try out. The bugs will be worked out of the Bobtail.