6-27/28-98

    Just back from Field Day as NU5DE and our best effort yet! We again set up our Field Day operation at Bluebonnet Naturist Resort, near Decatur, Texas. The hilltop near the entry of the resort is a good site for antennas, and not too far from the pool and clubhouse. Bluebonnet is nearing the end of a renovation of the clubhouse and it will be a tremendous improvement with central heat and air, more space and first class cooking facilities. The renovation meant that we were not able to use the club house facilities, but this year we were definitely busy, with little time to use the clubhouse anyway. Without a formal check for dupes, we have over 700 contacts in the log made on 80 through 10 meters! This is more than double the number of contacts we have managed in previous years. Although we had interest replies from 10 hams after I put the article in the Bulletin, one after another had to decline participation. We ended up with a total of four hams participating; Ben Thornton, Crystal, myself, and another ham from Oklahoma who operated his own rig.

    Everything worked this year! Murphy didn't visit! Antenna systems worked well, we had enough battery juice to work well into the night and everyone stayed healthy until Crystal lost her voice on the second day. Must have been those late night FD CQs! Crystal caused quite a bit of interest with the new call sign, NU5DE. More than one ham on the other end voiced the wish that they could see our operation! Last year we ran out of battery juice about three hours after the sun set, so we brought two extra deep cycle batteries this year. We ended up only using one of them, but if we had operated all-night we would have needed both.

    While our visitor from Oklahoma worked low power CW from his transmitter in the shade of a near by tree, we were on SSB running 100 watts, often holding a frequency and running with a string of contacts. Several hours on end we were able to average a contact a minute, and when 10 meters was hot, double that! This went on all day Sat. and well into the evening. Contact rates slowed down dramatically around 1AM and we hit the sack. I was back on the air by 6:30 AM after turning the VW van around to face the panels into the sun again. Except for another short swim break we operated straight through until the end at 1 PM. In all, we operated about 17 hours out of the 24 allowed.

    Antennas used were dipoles on 40 and 80 supported by a simple 30-foot mast made from electrical conduit. The higher bands were covered with a Cushcraft R5 vertical positioned 1/4 wave north of a Cushcraft R7000 vertical. We haven't measured the gain, but I'm sure there was some improvement over a single vertical by itself. Our best bands for number of contacts were 40 and 10 with 15 also being productive. Twenty meters was too crowded, and 80 lacked activity. Band conditions were better than I expected, with contacts as far as Hawaii and Argentina, and good coverage of the lower 48 on the higher bands. We decided to log by hand and transcribe into the computer to check for dupes later. This was to save on battery power and get around an unfamiliarity with the logging program. Simple log sheets were used instead of dupe sheets to make it fast and simple.

    Even though the weather was more than hot, (100 degrees shade temp.) we managed very well sans clothing and were able to switch off now and then for a cool-off in the pool. The van was positioned to take advantage of the sun, charging our batteries with the two solar panels on the van roof. The solar charging system worked perfectly in the bright sun and we never drew down the main battery until the sun began to set. We had a stiff breeze all day, which kept the cramped van well ventilated, and kept us from overheating.

    We also had a table set out with information and hand outs about amateur radio, but even though we were located along the main road into the resort, we were not close to foot traffic around the pool and clubhouse and consequently, few people stopped to see what was happening. Next year I set up the information table next to the pool!

Steve KG5BR

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