FIELD DAY 2004

June 26 & 27, 2004

Field Day 2004 Sponsored by Combined Clubs of Florida Atlantic University ARC K4FAU & Boca Raton Amateur Radio Association

Field Day 2004 photos by Sjaak W4RIS

Field Day 2004 results

Field Day results in Microsoft Excel format.

W4RIS send in a short article to slashdot.org on Friday but it didn't get published till 11:30pm. Slashdot is a news website for news for nerds. Stuff that matters.

Field Day 2004 as experienced by Sjaak W4RIS

Because some of the regular participants were not able to attend Field Day the plan was to have a smaller and simpler setup than previous years. The decision was made to setup as 2A with a GOTA station and keep every thing small and simple.

I arrived at T6 Saturday morning around 8:00 AM. There were already some people waiting and eager to get started. The antennas were already at the ropes course. They were brought there on Friday and assembled and tested.
We picked up some equipment and went to the ropes course [Photo].
Setup went smooth as far as the antennas [Photo] and the rest of the equipment was concerned. Some 2 hours before the start of the contest all the heavy work was done and the 6-foot Subway sub provided by Rudy KF4OM was enjoyed by all.

I volunteered to be the Field Day coordinator for K4FAU but due to personal commitments I had to resign and was only responsible for the logging. During the ARRL November sweepstakes I was introduced to N1MM a great and free contest logging program with the possibility to network the various logging computers. While trying to setup the N1MM program Murphy visited me frequently in the days before the Field Day (one fried laptop) and he was not about to disappoint me on Field Day. The setup was supposed to be 3 laptops, one for CW, one for Phone and one for GOTA and a "regular" PC as main logging computer. The GOTA station [Photo] was no problem. The problems started when I tried to setup the main logging PC. The monitor I picked up at T6 was not working. After replacing the monitor and some playing with the monitor settings it was up and running. Because I was short 1 laptop the plan was to use Ron W2DO's laptop but thanks to Bill Gates and his company I could not get it to work correctly so we used the main logging PC as logging computer for the HF Phone setup in the CERT-van (SU-65) [Photo]. This was working great until we moved the PC closer to the transmitter. The keyboard couldn't deal with the RFI. Every time the transmitter keyed the keyboard quit working.

This was going on while Fred, K9VV [Photo] was showing us how you should work a contest. In 2 hours and 15 minutes Fred managed to make 109 20 meter contacts!
Later in the evening Fred "forced" me to operate on 10 meter........ Because of his example I managed to make 73 contacts in 90 minutes almost at the same rate as Fred K9VV showed us!

I left around 8pm on Saturday evening and returned Sunday morning. When I arrived around 5 AM (according to the log. I didn't know I was capable of getting up so early) I found Fred K9VV behind the key [Photo], Lew K4LEW on the GOTA station [Photo] and Hank N3HV half asleep behind the mike.
According to the log files Nelson NE4LS and Ron W2DO worked throughout the night. Later I found out that some of the contacts in Ron's name were made by Hank N3HV. He forgot to log into the logging system. I took over from Hank N3HV but after 5 minutes (3 contacts) The lights in the SU-65 started to flicker and the generator of the SU-65 did a couple of last puffs and went silent. Hank was now wide awake and he tried to get the generator going again to no avail. We had to roll out more extension cords and run the station in the SU-65 of the main generator.
Later we discovered that besides gas a generator also needs oil! This is one of the main reasons FD got started, to test your equipment so in case of an emergency you don't run into any surprises! We now know that we need to bring extra oil!

All throughout Field Day there was one big constant, Nelson NE4LS on CW [Photo]. He only missed 7 of the 80 sections and thanks to his efforts we managed to work almost all sections except for Newfoundland/Labrador NL and Northern Territories NT! We certainly need to invite him more! (CW Sweep Stakes?).

The planning for this FD was small and simple with the focus on fun. From the meetings we had before FD I got the impression that fun was synonymous to low on the contest effort. This turned out to be not the case. The people that showed up for FD and that decided to get behind the mike or key got us the most contacts during FD of the last 4 years!. (I don't have older information) We made a total 1170 contacts! Of these 21 were dupes. Last year (2003) when we joined the West Palm Beach ARC, W4HAW in their 4A effort only 831 contacts were made!

The operators of K4FAU in order of number of contacts:
Nelson NE4LS, Fred K9VV, Sjaak (me) W4RIS, Ron W2DO, Paul N2PK, Mark KS4VT, John KE4IDW, Bruce KC4GH, Hank N3HV and John N8JUC

The GOTA station N4YQU also made more contacts than before, a total of 53 with 4 dupes.
These contacts were all thanks to Lew K4LEW, Sal N4YQU, John N8JUC and in the true spirit of the GOTA station John Ippolito.

With all these contest statistics we should not forget the Saturday lunch 6-foot sub from Rudy KF4OM, the great dinner Sal N4YQU made for us Saturday evening and the world famous (in the greater Boca area) waffles by John N8JUC Sunday morning. A very honorable mention should go out to Ron "an army marches on its stomach" W2DO for his Krispy Kreme doughnuts supply.

After lunch on Sunday the cleanup started while Paul N2PK on CW and John KE4IDW on phone were raking in the last points. When all the equipment was ready to be transported I said goodbye and went home to catch up on some sleep.

Some lessons / conclusions from Field Day (mostly my own opinion):
- Generators need oil.
- A little more planning to get some more bonus points and we will be a serious contender.
- K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple, Stupid. Setup as 2A (one CW station and one
phone) with a GOTA station.
- Two good working small beams is enough the rest of the antennas should
be wires. Some of the people at FD even suggested using only one beam.
- The beam that was on the SU-65 was bad. Resonant just above 20M, below 15M and nowhere near on 10M.
- Focus the GOTA Station on 160M 80M and 40M with good antenna's.
- Ferrite clamps to reduce RFI.

Thanks to every body for a great Field Day!

Story by: Sjaak van Dam, W4RIS