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6-28/29-99
Well, FD is over and now I can get down to business! We had a
successful field day even if the site was not at a naturist resort. Our
site and time was compromised by the fact that I had to work Sunday and
couldn't do the whole event. We decided our strategy should be to work
to get the call out there and have fun, rather than going for the point
totals. We operated using phone only with 100 Watts output to Ben's R5
vertical. Over 600 contacts in about eleven hours before the battery
dropped to 50% and we shut down (about midnight). I'll send you photos
as soon as I have them developed. Despite the partly cloudy, hot
weather, Ben's solar panel worked like a charm and kept the battery up
to 90% capacity until the sun went down.
Propagation was so good on 15 and 10, those were the only bands we
operated. We literally were able to hold a freq. for over an hour at a
time and had frequent comments like "are you guys running a kilowatt?",
"Great signal here into central Washington!" Our first secret was our
antenna location, perched on the north side of an E-W ridge with a 300
foot drop off to the north just feet from the antenna base! We had
pipeline propagation on 15 meters into Washington state, the north
central border states, and much of the north east. DX included Puerto
Rico, Newfoundland, Argentina and Hawaii. Our second secret was my YL
Crystal, N5LEQ. She couldn't assist until about 6 PM local, but then
took the mic and proceeded to hold the frequency on 10 meters for over
an hour and a half putting over 100 contacts in the log! Something
about a YL's voice!
Ben is doing the log this year and will transcribe it to the Fielday
program for duping and submission to ARRL.
Steve KG5BR