2008 Field Day

The annual amateur radio Field Day event is now over until next June. I had a lot of fun this year, and, of course, that is what Field Day is all about. Having watched the weather reports in the days leading up to this past weekend, I knew that it was not going to be pleasant the whole weekend. Also when I first showed up, it seemed that there was going to be a real issue with my station getting on the air. It seems that this year something happened to the first set of deep-cycle batteries that we were going to use. Most people simply decided to rely on generator power and use a power supply. I didn't pack a power supply. Fortunately, a second smaller set of batteries was brought out and my station ran fine the whole weekend. I set up my Buddipole antenna. One station was already running 20-meter PSK, so I configured my station for 20-meter phone. I used the station quite a bit and also gave other people a chance to use my radio, which, by the way was a Yaesu FT-897D. My radio was used on 20, 15, and 10 meters. I was really surprised on Sunday morning to notice that 10-meters was open. I did not expect it to be considering the level of the solar flux. I personally probably made about 70 contacts on my radio on the three different bands. Of course, numbers like that will not win awards, but I did have fun. Other people used their radios on 80-meters and 40-meters. While I used the search-and-pounce technique, some of the other people found a frequency and stayed put and called CQ. That method seemed to be more productive for them. I also spent the weekend taking photos and shooting video of the Field Day event, and I spent time just watching other people operate their radios, or listening to the stories that people told. This year, I did try out some relatively new equipment. The radio itself is less than a year old. I almost exclusively used my Heil Proset Plus boomset with the handswitch. That worked out great. Sunday morning I tried to copy the ARRL Bulletin. At first I tried to copy it on 15-meters, but then I found it was much easier to copy on 17-meters. It was easier to copy in the sense that there was less QRM (because 17-meters is not used for the Field Day contest), but the bulletin is read fairly quickly. So next year, I will be packing at least two extra things: a power supply, and a digital recorder. Another thing that I noticed at this year's Field Day, that I've noticed before but not recently, is the interference between radios. I was operating 15-meters while another station was operating 40-meters. Every time that they would key up to call CQ, it severely distorted my received audio. That was probably the third harmonic, or simply front-end overload from the main transmission. I think that I am going to pick up a set of bandpass filters between now and next year's Field Day. That pretty much sums up the Field Day that I attended: WC8OH, West Central Ohio Amateur Radio Association, 3A, OH. 73, N8OIF