Sooner than you think, Field Day will be here in the United States. That great weekend filled with signals on the air, setting up the stations, having the barbeques and breakfast — all shared with mosquitoes.

If you’re going to be working Field Day as a club, a lot of the planning should already be done and much already executed. Location determined, permits acquired, stations planned, station captains chosen, and an equipment list all drawn up.

But, is Field Day a contest? Or a social event? A public service demonstration? Or none of the above?

When I was back in Wisconsin, the Four Lakes Amateur Radio Club went big-time on Field Day putting ourselves in the category of 9A. Yup, nine stations on the air, fully manned, generators humming, and grills cooking. Assignments to maximize extra credit Field Day points from satellite, publicity, and old-time Novice tents assigned. It was a lot of work.

But a lot of people and clubs don’t do something that big (it really is a tremendous number of stations…). Instead, they focus on 1A or 2A where the number of stations is more manageable, but the competition more fierce.

What are you and/or your club going to be doing this year for Field Day? Let us know in the comments and see if we can finally resolve if Field Day is a contest or a social gathering…!

Scot, K9JY

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SteppIR is introducing the “the first (DB36) of a line of antennas that will cover 6M through 40M with good gain on all bands” at Visalia this weekend.

You can see quite a few pictures of the beam in the Holiday Inn parking lot from K6RIX. It is a very different looking beam antenna.

There is also a brief review from N9ADG, a beta tester of the beam. His review and pictures: SteppIR Dream Beam Prototype.

Right now it looks like delivery times of about eight weeks. You’ll need more than your tax return to buy it as well…

Scot, K9JY

From the ARRL Web site:

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today released its decision on the ARRL’s Petition for Review of the FCC’s Orders adopting rules governing broadband over power line (BPL) systems. The Court agreed with the ARRL on two major points and remanded the rules to the Commission.

The full story from the ARRL.

This is good news because the FCC ignored ham radio arguments and went with what power companies wanted to do regardless of the impact on services to others. Then the FCC didn’t allow anyone else to see the studies upon which they made the decision.

So we will ignore the will of the people, do what companies want, keep the studies secret that we used to make the decision, and implement it over your objections.

That approach sounds so familiar to me….hmmmm.

At least the Appeals Court can see this logic and send it back.

Scot, K9JY

There is a (long) conversation going on over at the Contest Reflector about how rules should be constructed around the new CW Skimmer software that recently made its debut for hams. The commentary ranges from letting a single operator use the software to placing that operator into an "assisted" category like packet to banning the software from contesting.

Having these sorts of discussions is a good thing in that it helps contest organizers figure out where all of the passion and objections come from while they design rules around this new technology.

The deal is this: technology will always be ahead of the rules.

Dipoles came before beams and beams came before stacked beams. No filters came before filters on radio and filters came before software DSP. No spots came before 2-meter local spotting and 2-meter local spotting came before packet spotting.

To try and have rules ‘already set up’ ahead of time to accommodate what we think might happen with technology is really a waste of time. We don’t know where technology will take the hobby — one of the things that make ham radio so much fun.

To try and take new technology and shove it into an existing rules category is a useful exercise much of the time. But sometimes something so new comes along that new rules need to be created.

Have at the CW Skimmer discussion with the rules. But let’s not have a heart attack over how it will be treated in the rules. You won’t have anything left over to deal with the next technology change that won’t fit into the rules.

Technology will always trump the existing rules.

Scot, K9JY

Those nice FedEx people delivered this to my door today:

Scot, K9JY