This year’s Field Day was a blast as usual. In fact, in some ways it was a lot more fun than previous years. Here are some random notes about this year’s Field Day.
Setup. Setup was much easier this year, mainly because I did not make it out to the site on Friday evening. I felt a little guilty about that, but as it turned out, I needn’t have. There were quite a few new members—new members who attended my classes—who did show up, so my help wasn’t really needed.
What I did do was get the club’s IC-746PRO and checked it out on Friday. The power cord needed some surgery, i.e. I replaced the huge lugs that someone had put on it with smaller ones that worked a lot better on the Astron power supply that we used.
On Saturday morning, after breakfast at a local diner with our crew, we got over to the site about 9:30 am. With help from Rich KA8BMA, Prem AC8QV, Faye KE8DDB, and Joe AC8ES, we set up the 40m/20m fan dipole, supported by my surplus fiberglass mast set. We’ve been using this setup so long, and there was very little wind, so that went up quickly.
Rick had brought extension cords, which he ran over to the generator, so we had power. Finally, we connected up the radio, and we had the station on the air (in record time) by 11 am. After that, we just sat around for a while enjoying the nice weather. The weather was so much nicer than last year, when we experienced monsoon-like conditions.
I tuned around a bit and answered a few CQs and called “CQ almost Field Day” a couple of times. The bands seemed to be in pretty good shape, and we were making contacts left and right. I was even “running” a frequency, calling “QRZ?” after saying 73 to the previous contact.
Get on the Air (GOTA). I was again the head coach for this year’s GOTA station. Seeing as how we are in Ann Arbor, MI, home of the University of Michigan, you could say that I was the Jim Harbaugh of Field Day. I had a lot of great assistant coaches, too, including Rick KA8BMA, Mark W8MP, Dinesh AB3DC, and probably one or two more that I’m forgetting. Their assistance made it a lot easier on me.
One nice thing is that we had no shortage of operators for this year’s GOTA station. I e-mailed the students who attended my January class and the class I held just a week and a half ago, and many of them showed up. There were five operators lined up at 2 pm Saturday when we started operating.
After a little tutorial on how to tune for stations calling CQ Field Day and then how to reply and give the exchange, I showed them how to log the contact on the computer. To make it as easy as possible, I made up a cheat sheet with our call, W8PGW, spelled phonetically. Also on the cheat sheet was what to say for the exchange, “THANK YOU. PLEASE COPY THREE ALPHA MICHIGAN, MIKE INDIA.”
They struggled a little through their first contacts, but eventually, most of them got the hang of it. Three of the operators made more than the 20 contacts needed to get the 20 bonus points in addition to the contact points. We made a total of 119 contacts in all, mostly on 40m SSB.
One of the operators was ten-year-old Sofi. She passed the test on Saturday, June 18, but unfortunately did not have her call sign yet. I showed her what to do, coached her through her first contact, and then she made three more.
I think she’d still be sitting there if her mother hadn’t made her give her eight-year-old brother a turn. He made two contacts, and then the parents said that they had to leave. I’m sure that we’ll be seeing Sofi again at next year’s Field Day.
About 4 am, Mark W8MP, showed up, and shortly after, Noah, one of his son’s friends, joined us. Although the GOTA rig had been disconnected so that it didn’t walk off on us, we immediately decided to fire it up again. After a little coaching from me, Noah was off to the races, and when our CW station operator decided to call it a night, I took over the CW station and Mark took over as GOTA coach. All told, Noah made 30 contacts, including the contact with Hawaii.
Finally, on Sunday, we even got our elected official to make a contact. How cool is that?
If your club doesn’t have a GOTA station, you’re missing out on one of the best things about Field Day. It’s not the points, either. It’s about the fun that both the participants and the coaches have.
Overall activity. While this was a very successful Field Day for our club, it seemed to me that overall activity was down. It wasn’t hard at all to find an open frequency on CW, and a couple of other guys commented on this. Activity will probably only get worse over the next couple of years, as we hit the sunspot cycle minimum.
Well, another Field Day is in the log. We all had a lot more fun because of the participation of everyone that helped set up, operate, provide food and drink, greet visitors, and tear down. I’m already looking forward to next year.
RickB KA8BMA says
WhenI retired 4 years ago, i decided it was time to give back.
So far,nothing matches the feeling I got watching Sofi make here first contact. Actually, all fhe new hams I worked with got that special look in their eye making that first Field Day contact under their belts. It doesn’t get much better than this.
Thanks for letting me be part of it.
Dave New, N8SBE says
Nice write up, Dan. Thanks. I haven’t gotten my pictures up anyplace yet. I’ll let you know when I do.
Dan KB6NU says
Thanks. I’ll post some of your pictures when you do (with your permission, of course.)
Tom N4RS says
I’ve been involved with Field Days for many years. One thing that bothers me, most FD operations are way too labor intensive. Why put up towers when you have 100+ foot trees to hang a good horizontal loop which will perform as well or better than a beam. With the intensive labor the poor folks are depleted for giving their best for operating. Their too tired. and totally unnecessary. Also go solar stop the noisy generators. Also why not use ONE operator per station. With the new logging software there is no need for a logger. Everything can be done from the keyboard. Seems folks have forgotten KISS…keep it simple stupid….Tom N4RS
Dan KB6NU says
I agree with keeping it simple. Towers are almost always overkill for Field Day. I also agree that loggers are not necessary anymore, and we no longer use them at our Field Day, but it is a way to get more people involved.