{"id":2203,"date":"2009-07-19T19:08:25","date_gmt":"2009-07-20T01:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sanantoniohams.org\/blog\/?p=2203"},"modified":"2009-07-19T19:10:48","modified_gmt":"2009-07-20T01:10:48","slug":"field-day-2009-roost-w5ros","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sanantoniohams.org\/blog\/?p=2203","title":{"rendered":"Field Day 2009 – ROOST W5ROS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Howdy Roosters,\u00a0\u00a0I submitted our Field Day report online to the ARRL yesterday evening.<\/strong>\u00a0 I will mail in our logs for our backup documentation.<\/p>\n

\n
Operating score:    1,605\r\nBonus points:         670\r\nTotal:              2,275<\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I bet we gave the Super Field Day folks a run for the money!<\/strong>\u00a0 That’s a helluva score, guys.\u00a0 You’ll notice under Club Name it says “None”: <\/strong>only clubs operating A, B, or F can operate under the club name – we were operating E.\u00a0 I don’t really understand the distinction.<\/p>\n
Under bonus points<\/strong>, Bob Wheaton copied the W1AW message and earned 1,010 points operating CW for a total of 1,110 points.\u00a0 (JEEZO-WEEZO, this guy gets the Big Dog Operator Award, hands down!).\u00a0 I entered we had educational activity.\u00a0 Well hellya we had educational activity:\u00a0 we ALL had to learn how to set up an emergency power supply and keep it charged with solar and wind power.<\/p>\n
I would describe our Field Day turnout as modest but very intense.<\/strong>\u00a0 The ops and supporting cast made this one of our most successful outings and it shows in our score.\u00a0 A lot of gratitude needs to be spread around, and as usual I risk an oversight and will unintentionally neglect a worthy contributor.\u00a0 My apologies in advance.<\/p>\n
Prior to Field Day, Chris K5VCR and Tom K\u00d8ZGC did a spectacular job reassembling and tuning our magnificent TH6-DXX beam.<\/strong>\u00a0 Bob W5XW gave it some elegant final touches by sealing the traps with heavy-duty shrink wrap.\u00a0 I think twelve guys offered options to hook the boom to the mast and the mast to rotor;\u00a0 Chris, Tom, Bob and Mark KB5ZPZ sorted it out and came up with the final assembly.<\/p>\n
Then it all came down to getting the beam off the ground and to the top of the tower.<\/strong>\u00a0 Our ground crew, as best I can remember, included Erik KD5YZU, Chris K5VCR, Dale N5YER, Lynn AE5LK, Ted KC5NYJ, Paul KC5ARZ, Dwight N5TCS, and Danny WA5KRP.\u00a0 I wish everyone could have been there for our first attempt to hoist that muuther up when it became apparent our ground crew had no idea what the hell we were trying to do.\u00a0 Funnier’n hell!\u00a0 Clearly we were not on the same page.\u00a0 We cooled off a bit, calmed our tempers, gathered around an illustration, and got a grasp of the task at hand.\u00a0 We went after it with renewed vigor only to be thwarted by a gin pole that had been incorrectly strung.\u00a0 Once again we stopped everything, lowered the pole, looped the heaving rope down through the gin pole, and started over.<\/p>\n
Success!\u00a0 With Mark in charge from atop the tower<\/strong>, we understood our plan, had plenty of horsepower,\u00a0 manipulated the beam past trees and guy wires and delivered it 72′ in the sky.\u00a0 Mark’s effort in this project cannot be overstated.\u00a0 His work just began once he got the beam.\u00a0 It takes infinite patience and dexterity to handle a huge beam twisting on a rope in the wind:\u00a0 nuts and bolts never cooperate and your short two or three hands.\u00a0 Hardware that fits perfectly on the ground is constantly binding and pulling apart on top of a tower.\u00a0 But Mark managed to put it together after spending well over 2 hours perched on Rohn 25G in blazing afternoon heat.\u00a0 Mark, Tom and Chris, THANKS A MILLION!\u00a0 Now we have a big gun signal.<\/p>\n
Our ability to operate a green Field Day came about at the behest of Bob Wheaton<\/strong>, who pointed out the emergency power 5X and QRP 2X multipliers, and the generous bounty of batteries made available to us by Ted KC5NYJ gave us the power reserves to operate continuously.\u00a0 The batteries were charged by two sets of 45W solar panels and – Lord have Mercy – a potent 400W+++ wind generator W5XW (there’s that guy again) has loaned to the ROOST.\u00a0 We had power to burn, folks!<\/p>\n
Ted was our PSK-31 operator this year.<\/strong>\u00a0 My hat is off to Ted.\u00a0 Band conditions and inverter noise worked against him for hours but he persisted from beginning to end, and came up with 43 contacts – 430 points.\u00a0 It turns out the group at Bexar County’s giant event experienced equally frustrating results with PSK-31.\u00a0 By next year I expect Ted will have a Plan B that will eliminate noise problems on our end.\u00a0 Couple that with improving band conditions and I think Ted will end up with a loaded log sheet.<\/p>\n
SSB phone is hard enough with 100 watts on Field Day.<\/strong>\u00a0 A -13dB drop in power makes it a lot tougher.\u00a0 Nevertheless, Dale N5YER and to a lesser extent myself, managed 33 contacts with 5W of power.\u00a0 Another epic exercise in patience.\u00a0 Thank you, Dale.\ufffd<\/p>\n
I managed 20 CW contacts<\/strong>, entered them on a computer, and don’t have a clue what happened to my logs.\u00a0 (Phooey – from now on it’s paper AND computer.\u00a0 The computer is still important to avoid dupes.)\u00a0 I turned my station over to my son Ryan (future ham) around 10PM Saturday to hook up a Navigator to my TS2K with Ham Radio Deluxe as the go-between – that turned into a monumental 11 hour task.\u00a0 Understand, Ryan never messed with radios – he’s a computer guy.\u00a0 Nevertheless, he absorbed enough understanding of my TS2K to ultimately get it to operate through a computer and is now capable of multiple digital modes.\u00a0 Thanks son – that was a magnificent job!\u00a0 Next year I expect to do a lot more operating and look forward to you using your new license to help me.<\/p>\n
We had a fine support team.<\/strong>\u00a0 Judy KB5VCR, Andy KD5TNI, Marie KD5UBA, Martha W9HIX, and Dave N7LRY saw to it we had plenty to eat.\u00a0 Can’t have FD without great food – they came through!\u00a0 I don’t know if we were just really hungry Saturday night, but Dave’s burgers kicked ass and took names.\u00a0 WOOOOOOOOO!<\/p>\n
We were blessed with folks dropping in to visit and share in the event.<\/strong>\u00a0 Yogi KC5MIP and Steve KC5QFC came by.\u00a0 Jerry Barry K5AXN and his wife came by Sunday morning – they gave us a touch of Royalty.\u00a0 Thanks folks!<\/p>\n
Finally, we had to clean up our mess.<\/strong>\u00a0 Tired and smelly as we were, I had no trouble getting help cleaning up the house and hauling off the trash.\u00a0 When I turned out the lights and locked the doors, the place looked pretty darned good.\u00a0 And that’s how it should be.<\/p>\n
Again, I apologize for my omissions.<\/strong>\u00a0 My 59 year old memory ain’t all that great.\u00a0 Thanks to all who made this a fun event.\u00a0 It took a lot of effort but it was all worth while.<\/p>\n
Now, we gotta start planning for another event.<\/p>\n
73\u00a0 Danny WA5KRP
\nSub-President, ROOST<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Howdy Roosters,\u00a0\u00a0I submitted our Field Day report online to the ARRL yesterday evening.\u00a0 I will mail in our logs for our backup documentation. Operating score: 1,605 Bonus points: 670 Total: 2,275 I bet we gave the Super Field Day folks a run for the money!\u00a0 That’s a helluva score, guys.\u00a0 You’ll notice under Club Name […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sanantoniohams.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sanantoniohams.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sanantoniohams.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sanantoniohams.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sanantoniohams.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2203"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/sanantoniohams.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2207,"href":"http:\/\/sanantoniohams.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2203\/revisions\/2207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sanantoniohams.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sanantoniohams.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sanantoniohams.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}