Another fun Field Day is in the books.? I think a good time was had by all¡ªI certainly had a great time.? The weather was outstanding!? Friday we got a bit of rain while we were out eating lunch, but that was after all the antennas were already up (except the satellite stuff).?? By the time we got back from lunch the sun was out and we enjoyed a sunny afternoon of mother nature¡¯s air conditioning with temps in peaking around 80.? Saturday was more of the same¡ªmother natures AC the whole day.
We had a total of participants this year.? The bulk of the operating was done by AE4TQ, WB4SQ, KE4QFB, and KE4UW.? Joe AJ2Y came by for a bit Saturday afternoon and even made one CW QSO.? John KB4SLV spent most of Saturday afternoon and evening with us and logged a couple of FT8 contacts.? A friend of Larry¡¯s also stopped by Saturday evening and seemed quite interested¡ªmight be a new ham in the making.? Saturday dinner we had AE4TQ (+XYL), WB4SQ (+XYL), KE4QFB, WB4SLV, and KE4UW (+XYL).? We might have lost an hour of operating time, but we had a great steak dinner.?
The setup went smoothly.? Three of us (AE4TQ, WB4SQ, and KE4UW) had the HF antennas up and two of the three radios all ready to go before we left for lunch Friday.? In the afternoon we got the 6m yagi and satellite antennas up and had the satellite stations up and running, and set up and tested the generator and solar setups.? Kudos to Eddie for getting the SAT32PC satellite up and running with my TS-2000 and Yaesu azi-ele rotor.? KE4QFB joined us around supper time and Eddie quickly got his radio/computer set up with N1MM.? So by the time the ARRL bulletin was broadcast at 8:00pm we were all ready to go.? Not ¡°almost¡± ready.? We were done done.?
So Saturday morning I tinkered more (rather unsuccessfully) with trying to send winlink messages via 2m packet.? I suspect we are just too far from the nearest packet nodes.? Could connect, but not reliably enough to get a message through.? Eddie and I played around with the satellite tracking and all seems to be working well.? After lunch we were all set to rock and roll!
We logged 859 contacts¡ª386 on digital, 279 on phone, and 194 on CW.? Joe made one of the CW contacts and the rest were courtesy of yours truly.? Yea, you read that right.? So for the second time now, KE4UW was the top CW operator for N4N!? Eat your heart out Jimmy.? ?? (I¡¯d tell you who was tops in digital or phone, but I don¡¯t know how to extract that info from N1MM.? I thought there were some tools to show qsos by computer, operator, etc (maybe by hour as well as total), but I can¡¯t seem to find them. )? The total was down a bit from last year¡¯s 1000 Qs.? I suppose that was more a result of us all taking an hour off for dinner, and a much later start Sunday morning than in the past.? It wasn¡¯t the equipment.? Everything worked flawlessly.
There were a couple of things that didn¡¯t quite pan out.? I never got the message traffic/message to SM to work.? The equipment seemed to be working just fine, but the nodes that were up and running just seemed to be a bit to far from me to reliably connect.? I also didn¡¯t make a satellite contact.? Not sure exactly why.? We never heard anything from CAS-4A and CAS-4B which in the past were the most reliable way to get a contact completed.? I missed a couple of passes with the XW-2 satellites just doing other things.? We tried an FM satellite and could hear others but did not make a contact in the bedlam of FD weekend on a single channel satellite.? But the software was controlling the rotor just fine, and Eddie used his IC9700 to verify the TS-2000 was transmitting on the correct uplink frequency, so I think the equipment setup is fine, but the operator needs to get smarter.? I¡¯m working on it.? Other than those two things, I can¡¯t think of anything that didn¡¯t work out exactly as expected.??
At 2pm Sunday when the operation ended, Eddie gathered the electronic logs, I threw some burgers on the grill (thanks Larry!) and Larry/Gary started tearing things down.? We took about a 40 minute break for lunch, and still by 4pm the deck was completely cleared off and the 6m yagi down.? After everyone left at 4pm I took a quick jump in the pool to cool off, made one more trip to the shed and two more trips to the basement, took a shower, and by 7pm I was sound asleep.? Guess I was a bit tuckered out after all.?
So that was Field Day 2023!? I sure had a great time.? Thanks to Larry and Gary for the help setting up and operating phone, and a special thanks to Eddie for doing his share of the physical setup, but also taking care of getting everyone¡¯s computer and radio linked up via N1MM.?
Margaret said I could have 24 hours off after FD ended, and that¡¯s up in 15 minutes.? So time to go take down the wire antennas.? ?
Dave UW
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Jeff Otterson n1kdo