Category — Hardware

Field Day brings forth a wide range of antennas used for the event. Clubs even have their own stock of antennas, hidden in local garages, to spring on participants if needed.

Whether it is beams and towers or stuff with wires, here are some Field Day considerations for antennas:

Easy Does It

Antennas have to be put up and taken down. Ham Radio rules apply here as well: everything will take twice as long as you think to put up and take down, so select something easier to do.

Lower is better

Field Day favors working stations close-in relative to the world. Verticals with low angles radiation won’t help you work as many people as you need to, so try horizontal antennas that are not too high up.

Monobanders help

Monoband antennas will give you better SWR across the band and will help reduce inter-station interference. Nothing like operating 20-meters on your triband yagi with the 15 and 10-meter stations chiming in as well.

Any tower must be well supported

Safety is a big deal here and people setting up antennas for an event are more likely to cut corners. Don’t do that; safety first.

Know your antenna supports

If you have a long wire or dipole or inverted vee…where will the ends be supported? The middle of a flat field doesn’t help you support dipole ends, so some other support structure will be needed. Pre-planning on the site will help.

What are your favorite Field Day antennas?

Scot, K9JY

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Field Day is coming up sooner than we think. So I thought I’d spend some time on Field Day and start working through some of the tasks associated with the event.

Most Field Day operations have more than one station. A conventional way of working each station is to have a “Station Captain” responsible for the setup, tear down and allocation of responsibilities for the station and operators.

What follows is a beginning attempt to establish a “checklist” for station captains.

Station Captain Checklist:

Equipment:

Radio

Antenna Tuner

Morse Key

Microphone

Computer

Field Day software

Computer – Radio Interface

Sound Card Check

Coax

Antenna 1

Antenna 2 (if needed or wanted)

Antenna Supports

Network Router or Hub

Network Cable

Wireless Adapter

Plans:

Setup

Take down

Operator Schedule

Bonus Point attainment plan for station

Food

Cooking

Shelter:

Shelter – tent, RV…??

Sleeping bag or equivalent

Clothes

For cooking

For refrigeration

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What else should be added to this list? What other lists should be here?

Scot, K9JY

On the Tower Talk Reflector, there has been a good discussion on “whole house” surge protectors. I had not seen anything like this until I watched “Holmes on Homes” on the Discovery Channel. The host of the show is now installing these surge protectors — about $500 — on the incoming power to the electrical box.

Supposedly, the surge protector will protect the entire house from electrical surges, though every one that I have read about says to continue to provide good surge protection at the point of the equipment. Plus, of course, power lines are not the only way surges get into the house — wired telephone lines, cable, and others contribute.

Multiple thousands of dollars can be lost without even being struck by lightning; the whole house surge protector seems to be a good investment to make.

Has anyone out there used whole house surge protectors? What’s your experience?

Scot, K9JY

Many hams have taken to podcasts and video to help tell the ham radio story. But Amateur Logic TV focuses entirely on video on it’s site.

The really great news is that each of the videos, in the half hour range for each one, is well done — certainly better than anything I could do.

The latest videos you can download: Ameritron Amplifier Factory Tour, MFJ Factory Tour, and Building the Softrock Software Defined Radio.

For those of you who haven’t tried doing video, let me tell you it’s a ton of work, especially for the length of the shows that Amateur Logic TV is doing.

There’s more of course. Real people talking to real people who provide us our stuff for a great hobby. Check them out.

Scot, K9JY

Seventeen pages of how to build beverages — using the KISS method. Tom, OH2BEN, notes:

Because I am not an engineer or technically oriented person, this is also a learning process for me. I am good to solder PL259’s, but all electronic stuff is beyond my understanding. But I am learning. And I can assure you, that it takes a lot of time to understand all technical nuances and there are still a lot of things what I cannot understand. Therefore all notes are just how I understand it and in a KISS way. And therefore you cannot expect to see some nice or new ideas

This is my kind of article.

Check out Building a Reversible  Beverage Array.

Scot, K9JY

Thanks ARRL Contest Newsletter.