Captain Jack Strachan, Our HOST. Click on the image to view larger picture. This is the second year that John, VE3LM; Karl, VE3MB and I, VE3MCF have operated Field Day on Jack Strachan's sailboat "JADA".
Captain Jack Strachan, Our HOST. Click on the image to view larger picture.
JADA - Tied up to our slip in Prinyer's Cove.
We still had the same challanges as last year. A sailboat is not the most friendly place to mount temporary antennas. The mast is metal. The mast supports are metal cable. You could pull up the centre of a dipole antenna to the top of a mast, but where would you tie off the ends of the antenna that would not be close to a cable. We need to get our temporary field day antennas away from the sailboat's rigging. (If the sailboat is yours, you could put insulators in the mast stays and get instant antenna elements, and/or put permanent antennas at the top of the mast. But that isn't in the rules for field day.) And, where do you find a "ground" if you're not on salt water? Check out our FD 2001 effort.
Our 20M Hamstick dipole antenna that we were successful with last year was brought out again to form the foundation for this year's effort. Strangely enough, we recorded 113 contacts for 20M SSB both years.
While our 20M antenna proved itself a winner in 2001 (and 2002), our second band antenna, a vertical hamstick mounted on the metal handrail at the bow of the boat (the pulpit), was very disappointing. John insisted that something better had to be found. His solution was a 40M Dipole where the ends were held out away from the sailboat's cabling.
Our 40M dipole antenna that we constructed was actually quite simple. The challange was to mount it on the sailboat without drilling/ marking/etc. We succeeded quite well, and managed 83 contacts on 40M as well as 4 on 15M and 14 on 80M. A worthy addition.
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Operating Position. |
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Operators |
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Sailing, sailing, over the bounding waves. |
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