Amateur Radio Page #3

Field Day 2002:

This year, Darrell (KB9LVK) and I decided to do a 2B2 field day operation. The site that we ended up working from is located between Eau Claire and Menomonie Wisconsin. The place is called Elk Mound Hill Park. If one travels I-94 in this area, just past mile post 52 (Eastbound) one can see the hill off to the north. It has an elevation of about 1100 to 1200 feet I do believe (If I remember the GPS reading). It stands above the surrounding area by a good bit, and on a good night I am told that one can see the IDS tower lights flashing in the twin cities in Minnesota.

I had worked various field days before with one of the local clubs, but I wanted to do something on my own call this time instead. This was Darrell's first field day for operating. This was also the first time out for the porta tower and it took a bit af work to get things in the air (no "fire drill" beforehand). We ran 20 feet of tower section, with about 10 feet of masting on top of that where the rotor was mounted. The Cushcraft A-3 and an Antron-99 were mounted here for 10, 15, 20 meters. We guyed the tower down and strung a G5RV from the rotor point to the top of the observation tower on the hill. Unfortunately after we started contesting, we realized that because of where we attached the G5RV to the portatower (yes above the rotor--duhhh), it was putting too much tension on the system, so we could not turn the beam and ended up shootine East/West the entire event.

We brought along a secont smaller trailer with a tilt over tripod on it for the 2M and the 440 homebrew beams for FM work. We set up a tent off to the side and worked out of there with a generator. We hit the bands pretty hard in various spurts, but took the time to chat with people who came by and explained the event, etc.... Sunday came around and the twin cities repeater crowd was saying that a good storm was coming into the area...as we had a few problems getting things IN the air, we did not want to chance a lightning strike and tearing down in the middle of a storm by ourselves. After we got things packed up and back home, the storms travelled around the site, so we could have had another 6 hours or more of contesting in. We could have been hardnoses and stuck it out and not shut things down for conversation, but we have a lets have a fun/friendly attitude, so we did have fun and learned from mistakes.

When contesting I try and inject humor into my contacts when I can. It may not give me a hih QSO rate, but it does make it more friendly. See you next year.

Results were as follows: #1441 overall out of 2100; 5th place out of 10 in 2B2 class; 2nd 2B2, in Central division (out of 2); 1st place 2B2, in WI (out of one), with 1072 points, 236 Q's, low power (x2 rate).

The pics are numbered and explained below. Click on the thumbnail for a larger picture