Amateur Radio

Field Day 2003:

Again, Darrell (KB9LVK) and I had decided to do a 2B2 field day operation. The site that we ended up working from this year (becuase with our "normal" ideas, we realized we needed more room than the hill from last year) was located just outside our back door in Eau Claire. If one travels west on I-94 past Eau Claire, as you go past the Hwy 37 exit (exit 65) you can see the site off to your left (South). Look for the Ski-Jump on top of the ridge a mile or so south of the interstate. Shortly into the planning, Justin (K9MU) told us he was very interested in joining us for the event...so we changed our plans and became a 3A station this year.

The forcast looked iffy...and we were hoping for good weather as the access to the site we were going to be using was dependant on good weather...at least for the top of the hill where we wanted to be. If the weather was bad Saturday, we were going to contest out of the lower public parking area below the hill. As it was, the call from the landowner who was permitting us the access was favorable and we went up top and started the antenna structures. We did not have enough coax to run any antennas up to the top of the Ski-Jump, but we did hang some inverted V's from the scaffolding/structure with ropes. We had a G5RV, and a homebrew 160 meter dipole (which somehow refused to load up on 160, but did a beeoootiful job on 50 Mhz), the VHF stack on the porta tower, and a Cushcraft A3 and an antron on W0AIH's tilt-up.

We all had soaked feet and wet clothes when all was said and done and contesting started as the field was filled with waist/chest-high goldenrod and it had rained during the morning hours. We got everything run into the B.U.T.T. and fired up the generator. Here we found that I had somehow misplaced my manual on the Yeasu rotor controller...for wiring it up...we ended up running manual rotor control for the VHF stack Saturday. We also had a slight mishap with one of the HF rigs...my trusty 101E. I had turned everything on so the heaters would warm up on the tube equipment, but had not noticed that the MOX was on, full drive power, mic gain up, and mic attached...with NO load on the back of the rig...15 minutes later Justin was just sitting down to start contesting and he said, "I smell something cooking." Sure enough, it was cooked and DOA. Other than that and the rotor, we had no major mishaps.

Justin ran the VHF station with my 736, and his Icom 746pro...he also did a bit of HF work...he's an excellent CW op, and he is a 6 meter monster! I ended up running my FT-101ZD instead of the E for the contest. Good thing I had backup rigs. Darrell ran the Saturn Turbo for the three 10-meter contacts we had, but for the most part he ran the Kenwood TS-120S on 20-meter phone. Justin napped during the night, while Darrell and I ran through the night and had a couple little doozies of thunderboomers come through during the early morning hours. When Justin woke up, I went out to the porta-tower and got the wiring pinout from the rotor cable plug, also finding out that one of the wires had come unsoldered...so repair and wiring diagram (now written on the controller) was accomplished and the rotor was in use. We did not have much action on VHF and above, though we did get a bunch of 6 meter contacts both CW and Phone. No 1296 Mhz or 160 meter contacts though.

40-meters was HOPPING!!! I decided to try it after I was tired of struggling with a non-existant 21 Mhz band...and essentially got in the middle of the recieving end of a pileup once I found a somewhat quiet frequency...offda! I was busy. The band was so loud and crowded, I ran the attenuator on the rig at -20 and still had full scale readings! Sunday 80-Meters was going well, Darrell was going great guns on 20, and Justin was hopping from VHF to HF. I ended up the contest running a good pileup on 15-Meters. Teardown was good other than the bugs. One tip for those in the fields...DO NOT WEAR YELLOW!!! Every little bug from the area converged on myself and Darrell who were wearing yellow shirts.

Oh, and for food, I took a suggestion from one ham who wrote into QRZ...Yes Pizza does cook well on a Weber BBQ grill...thought the bottom will burn easy in one puts it directly on the grating.

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

Score as follows: #976 out of 2064 overall, 179 out of 275 in 3A Class, 19 out of 30 in 3A Central Division, 4 out of 4 in 3A Wisconsin. 512 QSO's, 1684 points, Low Power (X2 mult) Class