Field Day after action report

[K5SLR]

I thought I would go ahead and start a list of things we might want to keep in mind for next year. I know there are more pressing matters at hand for many, but this will be a start. And we have a year.

First thing I'll do is make sure the coax I bring is compatible ( via adapters or whatever ) with the majority of radio gear we have on site. I got some good deals on coax at HamCom, but didn't get enough adapters to get from the N connectors on the cables to the PL-259 style on the radios. I'll fix that.

Another item I noticed Sunday morning was that we somehow didn't have a ground rod. That might have helped some with the noise on the bands. If we can come up with an easy way to install one, then yank it back out a day later, all the better.

I think we'd be better off avoiding placing our two main antennas on the same tower also. We were never able to be in the same band at the same time with the configuration we had this time. Separating the antennas as much as possible might help.

On a related note, my goal is to have my mag loop ready for next year. I'm designing for 80m-40m-20m. I think this will be very good choice for out digital station. Mag loops are very high-Q filters among other things, and have limited bandwidth. However, it should be plenty wide to cover all of the PSK activity on 14.070 or 7.070 at once.

The tarp for shade seemed to help Saturday afternoon, but I misjudged where it should be a little, so we got more sun than I'd hoped once the sun got lower in the western sky. ( mainly a note for next year. Move tarp north a bit... )

And my personal pet project - if we could just get Broadband Hamnet nodes up on the big tower, we could have internet at the field day site pretty easily.

Add to the list as you think of them. I think we did pretty good overall.

73's de K5SLR
Todd

[K5SLR]

2 Additional items:

Tags to attach to the radio ends of the feedlines would be very helpful, especially for late night antenna swaps.

And some more robust cable covers in case we again want to run the feedlines across the driveway would be good.

[W5NDC]

While the amenities at Paschal were great. I think a new location could be something to discuss. The park is down in a hole and surrounded by nothing but trees. So IMO I think we are limiting ourselves being down in that hole and combined with the trees there was no breeze which made the location a lot hotter. I noticed even though you were out of the sun, the pavilion was warmer than if you were out in the sun. If the location stays the same for next year I will be bringing a RV out to ether user for operating or just rehab from the heat. Just my feedback, otherwise I am looking forward to next year.

[carnage aligner]

Out of all of the parks, Paschal Park has the best separation from high tension distribution lines and open space to set up our tower(s). In the past, we had great scores from this facility, but we used RV's to operate from instead of the benches in the pavilion. I will work to get the OEM trailer there next year and if we have one more trailer then that's gravy. There needs to be more bodies there for setup.

The number one problem with 2015 FD was participation by more operators. If more operators had been available before and after setup, then additional antenna improvements that were planned could have been implemented and other managed tasks:

1. Ground masts to move the OCF dipole away from the SSB phone tower/Yagi.
2. Additional time to tune the Gap vertical which was not very efficient.
3. Additional masts to set up the VHF station with the 6 meter yagi. This band was pretty open in the evening and would have yielded a lot more contacts.
4. More operators
5. More operators
6. More operators

Next year we will improve the FD effort if the club decides to participate again.

Craig

[K5SLR]

The RV would be awesome if we can get it again. Air conditioning on FD is wonderful, although it wasn't too terrible without it this year.

One question about the RV though: I believe there are coax feedthroughs correct ? Are there ways to run other cords / cables /etc ? I'm planning to use fiber optics for my control link for my loop antenna setup.