The Waterville Area Wireless Association completed Field Day 2000 with fun and enjoyment for all attending. After tallying up the contacts and the bonus points, the club ended up with a score of 2238 points. Everyone participating should be congratulated for this year's achievement.
The club operated under the 4A designation that allowed us to operate four simultaneous HF transmitters along with the VHF equipment we had set up.
Setup started Friday afternoon about 3:00 PM at the James Bean School in Sidney. The trailer towers where deployed to their assigned locations and work commenced on assembling the beam antennas and various tower assemblies. By the time we quit Friday evening, we had the major components already assembled. Mike's (KB1AWS) scaffolding was in place, the club trailer tower and HF beam was assembled and left in the lowered position. Mike's (N1NAF) VHF tower had a 6 meter and 2 meter beam assembled and in the lowered position.
Setup continued early Saturday with Ron (N1NPJ) and Mike (N1NAF) raising the VHF tower, and getting the club tower ready for raising. As additional help arrived, we got the club tower raised and deployed vertical dipoles for 40 and 80 along with wire dipoles for 80 and 160 meters. Phil's' (N1IFP) HF beam was assembled and raised on Mike's (KB1AWS) trailer tower, and Bill (W1LEE) HF beam was assembled and raised on the grounds behind the portable class rooms.
By noon, the WA1WA station was looking in really fine shape with setup going extremely smooth. Most folks took a few moments for lunch, which was provided by the club. Thanks go to Dennis (WX1V) who provided a gas grill and to Ron (N1NPJ) who was the master chief cooking the burgers and hot-dog (which were very good too).
At 2:00 PM, WA1WA was powered up and on the air. During the next 24 hours we would experience some interesting events. For one, VHF proved extremely disappointing with only a handful of contacts logged. We also experienced a colicky generator that refused to run longer than several minutes at a time late Saturday afternoon. After falsely thinking the clamps and fuel lines where bad, William (N1RCV) discovered that the air filter was so dirty the motor couldn't get enough air. After removing the air filter, the generator ran flawlessly for the remainder of field day.
We also had some hi-lights too. The information booth saw action as a number of visitors came to check out our field day operation. Phil (N1IFP) even had a number of students come by to check out the station and work the equipment. We even managed to earn a many of the bonus points available to us.
However, we did continued to experience minor problems. Bill (W1LEE) experienced a hard disk failure that put his CW station out of commission for a while. Fortunately, his log file was recoverable. Mike (N1NAF) was also attempting packet work, but was constantly rebooting his laptop after the each generator crash.
Then a few minutes after midnight a really strange phenomenon occurred. Instead of the HF equipment and accessories experiencing a power loss, the school facility itself went dark with only the radios and accessories (including a dc lamp) illuminating the room. CMP had advertised line work during the overnight hours in our locale and darkened the town of Sidney for 3 hours. This made for a real eerie feeling but enthused us knowing WA1WA was a fully functional station independent of the commercial mains.
By Sunday morning we were still going strong with Maury (KB1EZZ) being our lone overnight operator. However, by mid-morning most of us had experienced enough fatigued and so we started the teardown ritual. Several hours later, the WA1WA encampment had been completely packed up and was being hauled away.
By the end of the event, WA1WA had made 451 contacts, 118 of which were cw/digital. With the power multiplier (2 for being under 150 Watts) WAWA had earned 1138 points from the contacts made. WAWA also earned 1100 bonus points during the course of Field Day to give us the 2238 total.
Here is the breakdown by band and mode:
| Band | Mode | Contacts | Points | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 80 | SSB | 90 | 90 | |
| 40 | SSB | 48 | 48 | |
| 20 | SSB | 79 | 79 | |
| 20 | RTTY | 1 | 2 | |
| 20 | CW | 65 | 130 | |
| 15 | SSB | 47 | 47 | |
| 15 | CW | 52 | 104 | |
| 10 | SSB | 58 | 58 | |
| 6 | SSB | 11 | 11 | |
| Totals | 451 | 569 | x 2 (Power Multiplier) = 1138 points |
Bonus Point Breakdown
| 1) Emergency Power | 400 |
| 2) Media Publicity | 100 |
| 3) Locating in a public place | 100 |
| 4) Information booth | 100 |
| 5) Message origination to section manager | 100 |
| 6) Copying the W1AW FD message | 100 |
| 7) Demonstration of a non-traditional mode (APRS) | 100 |
| 8) Natural power contacts | 100 |
| Total Bonus Points | 1100 |
|---|
That's the result for FD 2000, see everyone next year!
73 de Mike (N1NAF)