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Sample of Field Day eQSL Cards Received
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
Fresh from our outstanding performance at this year’s Field Day, and with our combined contact logs uploaded to eQSL, I took a quick look at some of the confirmed contacts we have logged there. Included with each contact is a confirmation card, in the form of a jpg image, that can be viewed, or printed. Here’s a sample of a few of the eQSL cards we received, including one card confirming a field day contact with New Zealand! What fun!
Sample of eQSL cards received from Field Day 2018:
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
Fresh from our outstanding performance at this year’s Field Day, and with our combined contact logs uploaded to eQSL, I took a quick look at some of the confirmed contacts we have logged there. Included with each contact is a confirmation card, in the form of a jpg image, that can be viewed, or printed. Here’s a sample of a few of the eQSL cards we received, including one card confirming a field day contact with New Zealand! What fun!
Sample of eQSL cards received from Field Day 2018:
Wire Beam
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
During our field day this year, at the 20 Meter digital station, you might have noticed what looked like a dipole with center balun and hanging coax strung up high between two trees, with another slightly longer wire with no electrical connections at all strung up separately behind it. What was with that?
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
During our field day this year, at the 20 Meter digital station, you might have noticed what looked like a dipole with center balun and hanging coax strung up high between two trees, with another slightly longer wire with no electrical connections at all strung up separately behind it. What was with that?
Here on the East coast, during field day, it is beneficial for making more contacts if you can create some form of beam antenna to take energy that would have gone out over the ocean towards Europe, and reflect it back towards other field day stations in the United States instead. That was the thought behind this rather simple antenna. Here’s a quick view into the theory.
Wire antennas are relatively cheap, and easy to experiment with. Even easier, though, is working with software to model and experiment with antenna designs on your computer before trying to build them. For this year’s field day, I experimented some with simple wire beam designs on the computer, before taking this implementation out into the field.
Shown here is 4nec2 model output of what the energy pattern would be with the second purely reflective wire added behind the active dipole antenna. Notice the increased gain and directivity compared with a standard dipole without the extra reflector wire added. By adding the reflector on the Europe side of the dipole, the thought was that communications could be enhanced in the opposite direction, improving both send and receive performance for communication with other field day stations scattered throughout North America.
So, did it work? We don’t have any formal field measurements, but anecdotal evidence says yes. Unlike previous field days, we had little trouble this year breaking through the RF pile-ups to get a station we were interested in to reply to us when using “hunt and pounce” method. And when calling “CQ FD”, it was not uncommon to get a couple stations trying to reply. We had no contacts to Europe, but many across the USA, including several clear across the USA into the “6” land of California.
This is part of the fun of Amateur Radio - you get to experiment, and try some new things on your own. And is there a better time to experiment than when preparing for field day? Just ask the guys that attempted to make QSO by flying a balloon vertical at field day this year what they are planning for next year. Maybe a vertical wire beam consisting of multiple wires held aloft is in the future? We’ll all just have to wait to next year to find out!
Field Day - June 23 - 24, 2018 |
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Band | Operator | Mode |
Tony Starr, WA2FZB |
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Willie Ustaszeski, WA2DUV |
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Jim Wright, N2GXJ |
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Kenny Denson, WB2P |
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Harry Bryant, AA2WN Joe Everhart, N2CX Gene Schoeberlein, AA2YO |
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Tony Starr, WA2FZB |
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(Get On The Air) Station |
100 pts max |
Support Staff and Bonus Points Information |
Points |
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Checklist |
Points |
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Table |
Laurie Love, KD2EYW Earl Robinson |
Points |
Staff |
Lee Marino, N2LAM Wayne Wilson, WA2LET Herb Dyer, KD2MQT Tom Litle Sr, AB2YG Jim Clark Sr, KA2OSV Jennifer Robinson, KD2EYR Laurie Love, KD2EYW Tony Starr, WA2FZB Karen Garth |
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Electronic Logs |
Points |
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Al Arrison, KB2AYU |
/Transmitter |
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Generator |
Jeff Garth, WB2ZBN |
/Transmitter |
Power |
source such as solar, wind, methane, or water |
Points |
Activity |
Matt Rainey, N2EEE Building an Arduino Fox Hunt Transmitter |
Points |
Participation |
100 pts max |
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Points |
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Bruce Canino, KD2LBU |
Points |
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To Section Manager |
Points |
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Day Message |
Points |
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Message Handling |
100 pts max |
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Elected Official |
Harrison Township Committeeman |
Points |
Served Agency Official |
Points |
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John O'Connell, K2QA Matt Rainey, N2EEE |
Points |
Field Day Chairman - Al Arrison, KB2AYU kb2ayu (at) comcast (dot) net Chart update as of July 27, 2018 |
Field Day scores and more - Wow!
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
Wow! That’s my impression of our Field Day in a one line summary. I can imagine you are asking, why? What does that mean?
There are many “wow”, but here’s a few that come quickly to mind. Perhaps you have some others to add? We can discuss some at the next club meeting.
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
Wow! That’s my impression of our Field Day in a one line summary. I can imagine you are asking, why? What does that mean?
There are many “wow”, but here’s a few that come quickly to mind. Perhaps you have some others to add? We can discuss some at the next club meeting.
Wow - the weather. What a pleasant surprise! Wow! The weather forecast was a bit dicey, at best. Hot, humid, thunderstorms, high winds and rain. Merrill WK2G and Willie WA2DUV, brave souls, were camping out starting Friday, and when I was leaving the site that evening, asked me to pray for them. Why? In prior year, they had camped out and a bad storm came in with strong winds causing all kinds of havoc, including downed tree limbs, flooded tents, and more. But fortunately that did not happen this year. |
Instead it was relatively cool (yea!), the winds were gentle (yea!), and the early morning drizzle was very light and cleared up just fine and we were dry for the start of on air activities. As far as field days go, this was a great weather weekend! After the gloom and doom forecasts, one word for the weather - Wow! We really lucked out!
Great teamwork!
It takes a team effort to coordinate and execute on an event of this scale. Think of all the logistics, from pre-event advertising, to social media, public relations and the warm welcoming of visitors, to food preparations and serving, to clean continuous and un-interrupted off-the-grid power, to safety, to bonus point opportunities, and for the challenges of having multiple individual station setup, operate, score collect, and what it takes to tear down and clean up after an operation like this spanning over a 24 hour period. Yet it all came together and went off without a hitch! A real “hats off” and kudos and many words of praise and admiration to everyone! Simply - Wow! Let’s talk about this and give thanks at our next club meeting. Well done!
Flying Minions! Wow! Who else but the crazy hams at GCARC would come up with such a thing? I could not help but laugh to see a Disney Minion character shaped helium balloon lifting a vertical antenna into the air over by Vinnie N4NYY’s tent. Throughout the day, more and more balloons were added. You have to admire the creativity! |
6 Meters - Open!
Wow! You have to wonder about all the effort it takes to put up an antenna for 6 Meters, when all you might get are a few local contacts here in NJ and Eastern PA. And that’s how the day started. But then all of a sudden, in came Rhode Island. And then more! Over 100 contacts on 6 Meters? Yes! Wow!
And what about that final claimed score?
Yes, what about that final claimed score? We have it now. All the logs have been collected, along with bonus claims and evidence, and shipped off to the ARRL along with QSO totals on each band and mode that our stations operated on. Scores won’t be official until confirmed by the ARRL, and published in the December edition of QST magazine, but we have our claimed score, and there’s just one word for that too: Wow! We did real good!
Wow? Well, how well did we do? Sorry, but you’ll have to wait until the full reveal at the July 11th club meeting (not July 4th, is pushed back 1 week)! But let me give you a teaser hint…. you thought last year was a good score?
Collectively, we had at least one contact to every ARRL defined section in the United States and Canada except for the Northern Territories. This included 7 different contacts to Hawaii, and two contacts into Alaska. Check out this sections contacted map below, courtesy of the N3FJP application. Wow!
[Spoiler alert] Can you guess the top 10 states or provinces we collectively had the most contacts with? Won’t make you have to wait for the full reveal data. They were PA, OH, NY, VA, FL, NJ, MI, ON, NC, CA, MA, and IL (and we had over 100 contacts - with each)! Nice!
There are a number of DX contacts in our log too. These included the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Aruba, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Portugal, Ireland, Germany, and Chile are in the log, as are New Zealand and Australia. Not bad at all!
So congratulations and thank you to GCARC. Wow, what a great field day 2018!
Ladies and Gentlemen of the GCARC!
You, and your family members and guests, are invited to our clubhouse at 3:45pm this Saturday, June 23 to participate in a field day 100 bonus points educational activity. Yes, the air conditioning will be on!
What is the activity?
Jim, N2GXJ will show you some simple software programming tricks to turn an Arduino into a fox hunt transmitter on 433 MHz! And then we will hide one outside, and see if can find it by homing in on its transmissions. (If you own a hand-held radio that can tune to 433 MHz, feel free to bring it to
help in the hunt). If that's too easy for you, we'll also have our regular hidden fox hunt transmitter available for some hide-and-seek fun. Hope to see you there!
While there, don't forget to stop by our public relations information table. It will be set up starting 2pm Saturday, as this is field day weekend! What a great opportunity to learn more about what what ham radio is all about by seeing it in action. Family members welcome! What bands will be open? Maybe 6 meters? How far will our signals travel? How many contacts can we make in 24 hours? All good questions! Stop by just to socialize, to say hello, ask questions, and check-out our on-air field day stations that will be in operation.
p.s. Did you know there is a youth participation bonus? A 20 point bonus may be earned for the first five participants age 18 or younger at our field day operation that complete at least one QSO. Stop by the digital 20 meter tent if you have have any youth in your party that might like to give it a try. You don't have to be licensed. By rule, non-licensed individuals may participate in our field day under the direct supervision of a properly licensed control operator. And we will have a control operator there. It should be fun!
And, of course, there's more. At 10pm (@22:00 local time), the SO-50 FM amateur radio satellite will be visible and will be passing nearly straight overhead. I can only imagine how crazy trying to make a contact through that bird will be on field day weekend! Having one successful QSO over any amateur satellite is another 100 bonus points. If we've not made a contact via inverting XW-2B (@17:35), XW-2C (@18:18), XW-2D (@18:44), or FO-29 (@21:25) by then, we might have to give this FM bird a try. The downlink is on 436.795 MHz if you want to listen in. The other FM bird, AO-85 (Fox-1A), should be passing overhead during daylight @19:38 (7:38pm), if want a preview. The downlink for that bird is narrow band FM on 145.978 MHz. Whatever happens, It should be fun!
Hope to see you there!
Jim
You, and your family members and guests, are invited to our clubhouse at 3:45pm this Saturday, June 23 to participate in a field day 100 bonus points educational activity. Yes, the air conditioning will be on!
What is the activity?
Jim, N2GXJ will show you some simple software programming tricks to turn an Arduino into a fox hunt transmitter on 433 MHz! And then we will hide one outside, and see if can find it by homing in on its transmissions. (If you own a hand-held radio that can tune to 433 MHz, feel free to bring it to
help in the hunt). If that's too easy for you, we'll also have our regular hidden fox hunt transmitter available for some hide-and-seek fun. Hope to see you there!
While there, don't forget to stop by our public relations information table. It will be set up starting 2pm Saturday, as this is field day weekend! What a great opportunity to learn more about what what ham radio is all about by seeing it in action. Family members welcome! What bands will be open? Maybe 6 meters? How far will our signals travel? How many contacts can we make in 24 hours? All good questions! Stop by just to socialize, to say hello, ask questions, and check-out our on-air field day stations that will be in operation.
p.s. Did you know there is a youth participation bonus? A 20 point bonus may be earned for the first five participants age 18 or younger at our field day operation that complete at least one QSO. Stop by the digital 20 meter tent if you have have any youth in your party that might like to give it a try. You don't have to be licensed. By rule, non-licensed individuals may participate in our field day under the direct supervision of a properly licensed control operator. And we will have a control operator there. It should be fun!
And, of course, there's more. At 10pm (@22:00 local time), the SO-50 FM amateur radio satellite will be visible and will be passing nearly straight overhead. I can only imagine how crazy trying to make a contact through that bird will be on field day weekend! Having one successful QSO over any amateur satellite is another 100 bonus points. If we've not made a contact via inverting XW-2B (@17:35), XW-2C (@18:18), XW-2D (@18:44), or FO-29 (@21:25) by then, we might have to give this FM bird a try. The downlink is on 436.795 MHz if you want to listen in. The other FM bird, AO-85 (Fox-1A), should be passing overhead during daylight @19:38 (7:38pm), if want a preview. The downlink for that bird is narrow band FM on 145.978 MHz. Whatever happens, It should be fun!
Hope to see you there!
Jim
Field Day’s On The Way!
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
It’s late April. Have you given any thoughts yet about what you’re doing for this year’s field day weekend? Not yet, you say. And then “when is it?”, you ask. Those who know will tell you it’s always the 4th full weekend in June. Same is true for this year. Mark your calendars now to reserve Saturday, June 23rd thru Sunday, June 24th to come out, and maybe camp out, to hone your radio skills, while demonstrating ham radio to the public, and helping GCARC to score big this year.
In case you’re not as familiar, Field Day is a fun total membership and guests event. Can anybody help out, even if they are not licensed? Yes! Help is always welcome. There’s meal planning and preparation, on-the-air station setup and teardown, and dozens of bonus point scoring opportunities available, from greeting visitors at our public relations table, to serving as a Get-On-The-Air coach, to serving as one of our safety officers, to being able to copy an over the air field day message, and many more. Just express your interest, and our field day chairman will help point you to who to see to get started.
See the above chart for a list available frequency bands and support activities.
Oh, and can you operate a radio? Plenty of chances to help with that too, of course! Consider if you might be able to bring, setup, and operate your own station. You can also take a shift (or two) helping at someone else’s station. There’s a bonus of 100 points per station, just for trying. Just let our field day chairman know if you feel up to giving it a go. Typically, we end up operating about 6 transmitters simultaneously on the air on various bands and modes. What if we set out to try and get 11 stations on the air at the same time on different bands and modes this year!? Is that even possible (yes)? Our field day chairman is responsible for coordinating. Let’s try and give him a challenge this year!
Perhaps you’re recently licensed and/or new to the club? Fantastic! Great! You are doubly welcome to join in! For many club members, this has become the singular biggest radio event of the year. This weekend will be fantastic for you! Of course, you’ll want to know more. There’s lots of information online at: www.arrl.org/field-day, to explain what’s going on, but in short, here’s a quick summary; the objectives are simple:
And everyone else is trying to do the same at the same time all over the country. Radio mayhem! Radio fun!
What’s in it for me? There are benefits to you, and to our club. For example, playing radio like this helps to develop your skills to meet challenges of emergency preparedness. You’ll gain practical field experience for learning how to setup and operate in abnormal situations, and in less than optimal conditions. Hundreds of stations similar to ours will be setting up all over North America, just to get a chance to participate in the event, demonstrating to the public and invited government officials what the amateur radio service can do and offer. Every contact you make scores points for our club! But really, it is a great chance to socialize and get to know some other club members better while having fun!
You’re encouraged to bring a friend, neighbor, or co-worker to stop by for a little while, for a tour of our stations in action, as a way to let them discover for themselves what this crazy hobby of yours is all about. Who knows, maybe they’d like a chance to get behind the microphone. That can be arranged too. So, what are you planning for Field Day weekend? Let’s reserve the date, and plan to have some fun!
By Jim Wright, N2GXJ
It’s late April. Have you given any thoughts yet about what you’re doing for this year’s field day weekend? Not yet, you say. And then “when is it?”, you ask. Those who know will tell you it’s always the 4th full weekend in June. Same is true for this year. Mark your calendars now to reserve Saturday, June 23rd thru Sunday, June 24th to come out, and maybe camp out, to hone your radio skills, while demonstrating ham radio to the public, and helping GCARC to score big this year.
In case you’re not as familiar, Field Day is a fun total membership and guests event. Can anybody help out, even if they are not licensed? Yes! Help is always welcome. There’s meal planning and preparation, on-the-air station setup and teardown, and dozens of bonus point scoring opportunities available, from greeting visitors at our public relations table, to serving as a Get-On-The-Air coach, to serving as one of our safety officers, to being able to copy an over the air field day message, and many more. Just express your interest, and our field day chairman will help point you to who to see to get started.
See the above chart for a list available frequency bands and support activities.
Oh, and can you operate a radio? Plenty of chances to help with that too, of course! Consider if you might be able to bring, setup, and operate your own station. You can also take a shift (or two) helping at someone else’s station. There’s a bonus of 100 points per station, just for trying. Just let our field day chairman know if you feel up to giving it a go. Typically, we end up operating about 6 transmitters simultaneously on the air on various bands and modes. What if we set out to try and get 11 stations on the air at the same time on different bands and modes this year!? Is that even possible (yes)? Our field day chairman is responsible for coordinating. Let’s try and give him a challenge this year!
Perhaps you’re recently licensed and/or new to the club? Fantastic! Great! You are doubly welcome to join in! For many club members, this has become the singular biggest radio event of the year. This weekend will be fantastic for you! Of course, you’ll want to know more. There’s lots of information online at: www.arrl.org/field-day, to explain what’s going on, but in short, here’s a quick summary; the objectives are simple:
- Using off-the-grid power sources, with set up in a public place, and using portable equipment in temporary setups, we try and log successful 2-way contacts with as many stations as possible during a 24 hour period from 2pm Saturday to 2pm Sunday.
And everyone else is trying to do the same at the same time all over the country. Radio mayhem! Radio fun!
What’s in it for me? There are benefits to you, and to our club. For example, playing radio like this helps to develop your skills to meet challenges of emergency preparedness. You’ll gain practical field experience for learning how to setup and operate in abnormal situations, and in less than optimal conditions. Hundreds of stations similar to ours will be setting up all over North America, just to get a chance to participate in the event, demonstrating to the public and invited government officials what the amateur radio service can do and offer. Every contact you make scores points for our club! But really, it is a great chance to socialize and get to know some other club members better while having fun!
You’re encouraged to bring a friend, neighbor, or co-worker to stop by for a little while, for a tour of our stations in action, as a way to let them discover for themselves what this crazy hobby of yours is all about. Who knows, maybe they’d like a chance to get behind the microphone. That can be arranged too. So, what are you planning for Field Day weekend? Let’s reserve the date, and plan to have some fun!
Objective :
To work as many stations as possible on any and all amateur bands (excluding the 60, 30, 17, and 12-meter bands) and to learn to operate in abnormal situations in less than optimal conditions.
Field Day is open to all amateurs in the areas covered by the ARRL/RAC Field Organizations and countries within IARU Region 2. DX stations residing in other regions may be contacted for credit, but are not eligible to submit entries.
Dates :
Field Day is always the fourth full weekend of June, beginning at 1800 UTC Saturday and running through 2059 UTC Sunday.
To work as many stations as possible on any and all amateur bands (excluding the 60, 30, 17, and 12-meter bands) and to learn to operate in abnormal situations in less than optimal conditions.
Field Day is open to all amateurs in the areas covered by the ARRL/RAC Field Organizations and countries within IARU Region 2. DX stations residing in other regions may be contacted for credit, but are not eligible to submit entries.
Dates :
Field Day is always the fourth full weekend of June, beginning at 1800 UTC Saturday and running through 2059 UTC Sunday.
ARRL Field Day 2018 on Social Media!
Click the link to download the PDF file
ARRL 2018 Field Day Packet.PDF
W2MMD Clubhouse
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