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Field Day 1999

KF4SRA · Class 3A · NC Section
June 26-27, 1999 · Picnic shelter 2, the county park
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The Short Version

Twenty-four hours, three HF stations plus a VHF station, one generator (mostly), twenty-six operators, 1,651 contacts, two thunderstorms, and roughly forty pizzas. Our claimed score is 5,724, which beats last year by almost nine hundred points and is the best the club has ever turned in. Final results will be in QST when the ARRL gets them sorted out.

For anyone new: Field Day is the fourth full weekend of June every year. Clubs all over the U.S. and Canada set up portable stations in parks and fields, run on emergency power, and try to contact as many other Field Day stations as possible in 24 hours. It's half contest, half emergency drill and half picnic, which is too many halves, but that's Field Day. Our exchange was "3A NC": three transmitters on the air at once, club portable, North Carolina.

Score Summary

Band	CW	Phone
80 m	112	88
40 m	318	241
20 m	205	402
15 m	96	117
10 m	0	34
6 m	0	21
2 m	0	17
Total QSOs	731	920

CW QSOs     731 x 2 pts  =  1,462
Phone QSOs  920 x 1 pt   =    920
                           -------
QSO points                  2,382
Power multiplier (150 W
  or less)                     x2
                           -------
                            4,764
Bonus points                  960
                           =======
CLAIMED SCORE               5,724

Bonus points claimed:

100% emergency power, 3 transmitters: 300
Public location: 100
Public information table: 100
Message to the Section Manager: 100
Copied the W1AW Field Day bulletin: 100
Media publicity (the paper ran our picture, see below): 100
Five QSOs on natural power (N4XHG's solar panel and a QRP rig): 100
Six formal NTS messages originated and relayed: 60

No satellite contact this year. Phil tried for two passes with a hand-held beam and got nothing but a sore arm.

The Stations

Station	Rig and antenna
1: CW	Kenwood TS-850S. 40 m dipole about 50 feet up in the oaks, 80 m inverted V.
2: SSB	Yaesu FT-1000MP. Tribander on a 30-foot push-up mast, borrowed from W4ODY.
3: SSB / digital	ICOM IC-706MkII. Rotating between 40 and 15, plus a little 10 m when it opened.
VHF	Second IC-706 with a small 6 m beam and a 2 m vertical. Run by K4EVP, who logs on paper and will not discuss it.

Power came from Ray's 5,000-watt generator, with the solar panel and a deep-cycle battery for the natural power contacts. The HF stations logged on two old laptops running DOS contest software, networked together with a cable that Dave made the night before and tested at 1:45 p.m., fifteen minutes before the start.

Highlights and Lowlights

2:00 p.m. Saturday. On the air right at 1800 UTC. Twenty meters was wide open and the SSB station ran a pileup for the first three hours straight.

5:10 p.m. First thunderstorm. We shut down the HF stations and dropped the antennas to the ground for 40 minutes, which is the right thing to do and also cost us about eighty QSOs. Nobody complained. Well, one person complained.

7:30 p.m. Six meters opened up! Sporadic E, and for about an hour the VHF station worked stations in Florida, Texas and Missouri with a small beam and 100 watts. Earl was very happy. He even let someone else write in his log.

Saturday evening. A Boy Scout troop visited, and four of the scouts made supervised contacts on 20 meter SSB. One of them talked to a Field Day station in Alaska and has been asking his mother about a license ever since. That's why we do the information table.

3:12 a.m. Sunday. The generator ran out of gas. The person who was supposed to top it off at midnight will not be named here, but he maintains this web page. Seven minutes of silence and a lot of stumbling around with a flashlight and a gas can. Lesson learned. Next year there is a clipboard.

9:00 a.m. Second thunderstorm, shorter. Biscuits from the Hardee's by the interstate, courtesy of the treasurer.

2:00 p.m. Sunday. Last QSO in the log at 1:59 local, a CW contact on 40 with a station in Ontario. Tear-down was done by 5:00 and the shelter was cleaner than we found it.

In the paper. The local weekly ran a picture on the front of the second section: three of us under the shelter with the headline "Hams Prepare for Disaster, Enjoy Pizza." Accurate.

Thank You

To the county parks department for the shelter and the power outlet we promised not to use. To everyone who brought coax, food, tables, tents and bug spray. To the spouses. And to the twenty-six operators, from a 14-year-old Technician on his first Field Day to a 79-year-old who has worked every Field Day since 1953.

Next year: June 24-25, 2000, same place, same pizza, more gas.

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Field Day page last updated Monday, September 20, 1999, by KD4QZT