FD 2001

Field Day 2001 - W6PT - Point Loma, CA

The antennas for W6PT were setup on two tower trailers.

Tower trailer number 1 was the 73 foot tower trailer of AK6R which had the 2 element 40 meter beam (F12 - 240X) at 66 feet, the 4 element 20 meter (Hygain 204BA) beam at 61 feet both rotatable but never rotated, and the 5 element 15 meter beam (Hygain 155CAS) at 38 feet on its own rotator but never rotated. The US Flag is on top for good luck.

Tower trailer number 2 was the 45 foot tower trailer of KD6QK which had a 5 element 10 meter (Hygain 105CAS) on the top, with a 13 element 2 meter beam (Vertically polarized) in the middle and the 5 element 6 meter beam at approximately 30 feet. The KD6QK trailer is a self contained trailer for Amateur Radio Communications. The side fold down to provide operating positions. Pictures of each of the tower trailers as they were raised are shown below:


AK6R Tower Trailer loaded up and ready to travel to the FD site about an hour away. I hauled a 2 element 40, 4 element 20, 5 element 15 and 5 element 10 on this trailer.	Arrival at W6PT site and AK6R welcome pose before work begins. Temperature about 75 degrees, with a 10 knot wind off the ocean - just like a Caribbean dxpedition.

K6LL helps with 1/2 of the 5 element 15 beam that was mounted on the lower rotator of the trailer tower at the 38 foot level (when raised). The other 1/2 of the antenna is put on as the tower is tilted up. You can see the mast for the top rotator to the left of the ladder.	Outrigger? Mast? Boom? Driven Element? Reflector? Where is the other half of the third director? I will have to better label all the pieces and antenna parts before next field day.

AK6R cranking tower into vertical position. This is the only manual labor part of raising the tower. Obviously I lost the coin toss and had to crank up the tower - that's why my cw was slower than usual - my fore arm was very tired. Good thing that Coors makes medicine for such ailments!	Minutes before I pushed the button to raise the antenna with its motorized winch. Now where did I put the on/off key?

Snail's eye view of the antenna. Halyard from yardarm below middle antenna was used for 80 meter inverted vee support.	Eyeball view from contesters on east coast. (We often got S9+40 reports from the East Coast - this location really plays well!)

Tower Trailer of Harv, KD6QK with welcome pose from Harv. The sign on the side says "Amateur Radio Communications". The tower can be seen just over Harv's head and the raising fixture is on the back of trailer.	Three element tri-bander going on. We later decided to take this antenna off and use the 5 element 10 meter beam - hoping 10 would be open -it wasn't for very long.

Tilting up the tower. N6VS supervising in background.	Both towers raised and pointing North to calibrate the rotators. Other Towers are PLARC fixed antennas - not used.

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