Home of the Key West Amateur Radio Club
Home of the Key West Amateur Radio Club
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FIELD DAY 2000 By: Dean Nickless, W4WHN This year’s Field Day was held in conjunction with the Florida Keys Amateur Radio Club on Saturday and Sunday June 24th and 25th at the Blue Heron Park, Big Pine Key. The antenna system worked very well, starting with the two trailer mounted towers. The H.F. tower had a three element tri-band Yagi for 10, 15 and 20 meters, and a wire dipole fed through a 4:1 balun for 80 and 40 meters. On the VHF tower, we had a three element Yagi for 6 meters and a thirteen element Yagi for 2 meters. Band conditions were the best I have heard for a Field Day event; 80 and 40 were probably the hardest to work with lots of static crashes. 20M was wide open with very little room to find a frequency to call CQ, contacts were made tuning the band. 15M saw the majority of the contacts on H.F. 10M was also open and produced a pile up after a short session of CQ’ing. The VHF bands are always a gamble, but paid off this year. 6M was open most of the weekend with just a few periods of no propagation; most were single hop E-skip to the east and Midwest. Two meters was a bit of a surprise. We worked the usual few stations in Florida, but for a few minutes on Sunday morning, the MUF came up to include 2M in the E-skip. We had just one contact with W3EME in eastern Pennsylvania, but it added lots of excitement to the band. For the first time I can remember, we had an alternative energy station. It ran from a solar charged battery and gave us the required 5 contacts, giving us an additional 100 points on our score. We had a great turnout from both clubs, with lots of willing hands to set up and tear down. It was also great to see operators new to Field Day come out to sharpen their skills. The Blue Heron park made a good Field Day site. We had some good spaces to set up the towers and some convenient trees just right for the ends of the dipole. The area under the main building became the dining hall/kitchen where Shirley, WA4JFK, once again did an outstanding job feeding the masses. The food was terrific. Upstairs, we had the radios set up, with H.F. along one wall and VHF on the opposite wall. Coax and rotator cables came through the windows and the air conditioning kept everyone cool and comfortable at the rigs. As Field Day chairman, my job could not have been easier. Thanks to all of you for your support and very active participation in this first joint Field Day event. 73, Dean, W4WHN
Here are some pictures of the activities: SUMMARY FIELD DAY 2000 KEY WEST AMATEUR RADIO CLUB CALLSIGN W4LL0 MODE CONTACTS POINTS PHONE CONTACTS 462 462 CW CONTACTS 0 0 NOVICE CONTACTS - PHONE 0 0 NOVICE CONTACTS - CW 0 0 PACKET CONTACTS 0 0 TOTAL FOR CONTACTS 462 462 MAX POWER 100 Watts - Multiplier is 2 CONTACT POINTS INCL. MULTIPLIER 924 FIELD DAY CLASS 2A BONUS POINTS 100% Emergency Power 200 Media Publicity 100 Public Location 100 Info program for Public 100 Message Origination to SM, SEC 100 Messages Relayed - 0 0 Satellite QSO 0 Natural Power 100 WlAW Message 100 Packet Radio QSO 0 Non-traditional Demo (APRS) 100 GRAND TOTAL FOR CONTEST 1,824 MEMO: TOTAL CW & PHONE OSCAR CONTACTS WERE 0 These are included in the CW and Phone contacts shown above.
Our only visitor who didn't sign the log:
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