The 2024 SPARC Field Day was attended by 47 Hams, guests and visitors. Twenty two individuals operated and shared in reaching 1924 QSOs. The breakdown of QSOs was 800 on phone, 671 on CW and 453 on FT8. The Club’s total submitted score was 6,796 with 6096 points attributed to contacts and 700 bonus points for items such as media publicity, sending formal messages, copying the ARRL Field Day message, and site visits by an elected official. The picnic lunch/dinner event was enjoyed by all who attended. Over all, Field Day was a success and lots of fun.
Posts published in “Field Day”
The video covering most of the efforts by the SPARC operators was captured by 3 participants and put together in a short video on the SPARC YouTube channel.
Field Day produced good results for SPARC. The group of operators listed below worked a total of 1643 QSOs. Of those 759 were made by CW, 702 by FT8/4 , and 182 by SSB. Our score based on QSOs alone was 6,208. Dave KR4U added 100 points to that total by copying the ARRL Field Day Message. Another 50 points was added by submitting our results on ARRL’s submission page.
FD rules allow any club member to operate any class under their own call and have their total QSOs added to the SPARC station score to be used in the Club Competition. Dave KR4U, John KI4UIP, Carol AB4YI, and Josef KQ4GAH added points from their home stations.
Operators of the SPARC station were: AAØO AA2MF AB4YI KB1EBC KB9LX KD2UDU KF4TYA KI4UIP KN4YQC KO4WPO KQ4DVG KQ4DXM KR4U N4GRC W1EES W4BOO W4CU
SPARC Field Day will be on June 24-25th at our club station location, DMI Research, 6699 90th Ave N, Pinellas Park, FL. We’ll start at 12pm Saturday with station familiarization and a little practice, the on-the-air operating event starts at 2pm Saturday and runs through 2pm Sunday.
We’ll be operating as 4-Delta with stations on SSB, CW, and Digital(FT8, etc). We’ll be using Yaesu FT-1000 radios and N1MM logging software. Operation will be indoors with Air Conditioning.
If you are planning to attend, please fill out the form using the link below so we know how much food to get.
SPARC Field Day 2023 Signup Form
Please bring your own headphones. You’re welcome to bring your HT radios but please no HF radio transmissions on-site from personal radios without organizing with the current operating team so we don’t get interfernce.
Allow a few minutes after submitting the form for your callsign to show in the list.
During my research for the update to the SPARC History page, I came across the Year in Review post from our previous Club President Bob N2ESP and that inspired me to write one for this year. I feel that SPARC had a great 2022 and 2023 is looking good too.
We started out the year with Winter Field Day, collaborating with CARS and UPARC, the event was setup at the Clearwater Fire Training center. Due to forecasted low temperatures and high winds, the decision was made to move the event indoors rather than setup outside like the typical WFD setup we’ve done there previously.
In February, we had our traditional SPARC photo at noon on Satruday outside the main vendor building at Hamcation in Orlando. This meetup offers a good opportunity for club members to show off their new purchases at Florida’s biggest ham fest. This year we even got a short video. We had our after holidays party at Kristina’s Cafe which got a good turn out.
We purchased a new (to us) tower to replace the club station tower that was damaged during a tornado in early 2020. We also replaced the leaning tower that was supporting the end of the dipole with a more substantial one. In April, we attached the log periodic antenna which got us back on the air. Also in April we had our first SPARC in the Park event at Sawgrass Lake Park. This is an official Parks on the Air park K-6700 so it’s always good for a pileup. After some POTA, we did a fox hunt hosted by William Gauzens W4WYR.
In May, we moved our meetings from the church at 5th Ave N and 49th St N back to the club station location at DMI Research in Pinellas Park. We switched the live feed of the meetings from Zoom to YouTube, thanks to Billy KN4LUZ, you can watch them on his YouTube channel https://youtube.com/@kn4luz
In an effort to increase club participation, we hosted ARRL Field Day at DMI. To test the new tower and make things a little more straightforward, we operated indoors with commercial power with 3 stations in the 3-Delta category. We took 2nd place in that category and had 1,455 QSOs.
With the station tested out from Field Day, W4CU and AA2MF organized some operating events. The first was NAQP RTTY in July, then NAQP SSB in August, then CQ WW RTTY in September, which was cut short due to the approaching Hurricane Ian. Luckily we didn’t get a direct hit. November brought the ARRL Phone Sweepstakes in which the team was able to get a “Clean Sweep“, working all 84 sections of the US and Canada.
In the week leading up to SPARCfest in November we had quite a bit of rain that flooded out Freedom Lake Park. We were able to work around it by setting up on the roads around the field. Attendance was good and many deals were had.
Our final SPARC in the Park event was again at Sawgrass Lake Park in December (being a POTA park really makes the on-the-air activities exciting).
Also in December, we completed the electrical move of the station to a new room inside DMI. The station is currently off the air while the move is completed but it will be back better than ever soon enough. We had a failure of the 220m repeater which was repaired by Bob, KC4SXO, Mike, KN4LVA and Ed, NZ1Q.
Thanks to all the club members that helped make these events a success and to everyone who participated, we couldn’t do it with you. Have a Happy New Year and we’ll see you in 2023 for more radio fun!