Had another fun Field Day weekend!? A lot of things went really well¡ªspecial thanks to Eddie for all his work getting the software and radios playing nicely together.? He also got my new IC9700 set up with satpc32 and the azi-ele rotor so making a satellite contact was so simple even a computer dolt could do it, bleary eyed a bit fuzzy headed, alone, at 1:30 am.? ?? Also thanks to Joe AJ2Y and Eric W4MC for helping me work through several failed attempts at sending message traffic.? Finally got that figured out and working reliably (using HF rather than 2m packet) this past Wednesday.? Thanks too to Jeff1 for setting up his raspberry pi widget to constantly rotate among screens showing pie charts of qsos by mode or operator, map that filled in USA/Canada sections as we worked them, and charts of qsos by band, mode, operator, etc.? It was fun to watch¡ªespecially on Sunday.?
As an example of the difference a bit of luck can make:?? Anyone remember a fire drill getting the generator going again when it ran out of gas leaving all 4/5/6 stations dead in the water?? C¡¯mon, you know it happened.? More than once.? Well this year the generator got filled periodically, so we never ran out of gas . . . until about 5 minutes past two Sunday afternoon.? Some days you win, some days you lose.? This year we won.? We also learned that the generator can run from 7:00am until 2:05pm on one tank of gas.?
While we didn¡¯t have to work around thunderstorms as we often have in the past, it certainly was toasty Friday through Sunday.? Ceiling fans, box fans, and the pool were put to good use cooling us down.?
Things were going a bit slow on Saturday as we (really Eddie) worked out a fist full of quirks with stations that didn¡¯t want to behave.? So by 10pm when things wound down for the night we only had about 300 qsos.? Another 100 or so, mostly CW, were logged waiting for the satellite pass, so at 0200 there were 415 or so contacts.? We all got some sleep and didn¡¯t really re-engage until after breakfast, around 0900.? Once we got fired up Sunday, we were rocking and rolling, averaging better than 100 qsos an hour for the last 5 hours.? Much mo betta.?
We made just under 1000 qsos on the main N4N stations, plus 24 GOTA contacts from 7 or 8 visitors, and a half dozen satellite contacts.? Qso points should be around 3275 (compared to 2875 or so last year).
Pursuit of bonus points went remarkably well this year.? We got 400 points for operating on emergency power, 100 points for alternate power qsos, 100 points for copying the ARRL bulletin (got it on CW, digital, and RTTY), 100 points for having a safety officer and completing the safety checklist, and 100 points for Eddie¡¯s posts regarding N4N to Facebook.? Using Winlink Express and VARA the message traffic was successfully sent via RF, including one message to the SM, for another 200 points.? Gary served as GOTA coach for more than 10 GOTA contacts for another 100 points.? We also successfully made 8 satellite contacts, for qso points plus a 100 point bonus.? We¡¯ll get another 50 points for electronic log submission, for a total of 1250 bonus points (compared to 750 last year).
So . . . total score should be around 4500, compared to 3600 last year.? All preliminary, of course, but not too shabby!
And Jimmy!!!? Guess who was the top CW op, again!!? ?
More to follow, but for now I¡¯m hitting the sack.? Getting up early tomorrow to get the wire antennas down and coax put away.?
Dave UW
