As you may know, our normal Field Day at the fire training center is not happening this year. Many members are taking advantage of the rule changes to operate class 1D or 1E from home. One of the changes the ARRL made —for this year only —is the ability to aggregate our individual scores under one club name. Please note that you still just make contacts with your own call but when it comes time to send in your Field Day entry, in the spot for club name you can add a name and everyone that uses that same club name will see a single entry in the results for that club name. Your regular entry listing with your own callsign still appears.
This just gives a way for club members to all contribute to a single score —Field Day is not a real contest so it is not terribly important but in case you do, I wanted to send out some recommended names. The reason is that when all the scores are added up, it goes by the match of the club name. Hence, if I sent in my log with a club name of SPARC, a second member uses St. Petersburg ARC and yet a third uses St. Petersburg Amateur Radio Club, those are three different names and three different club names would appear and the scores would not be added up.
To help alleviate that, I thought I would offer some club names to standardize upon to minimize this issue:
Since we normally operate Field Day as a joint club effort —and in respect of those efforts —I have opted to use the same club name I send when I submit the entry in a normal year: I use the following name (somewhat abbreviated for it will not fit on the QST listing:
Clearwater ARS / St. Petersburg ARC / Upper Pinellas ARC
If you want to use one of the specific club names, try one of these:
Clearwater Amateur Radio Society
St. Petersburg Amateur Radio Club
Upper Pinellas Amateur Radio Club
I am also planning an after Field Day Saturday morning presentation to walk through the process of sending in your Field Day entry. More info on that later but it is tentatively scheduled for 10:00 AM EDT on July 11, 2020.
With more people opting to operate from home this year, this is a Zoom online session presented by Tom NY4I on setting up N1MM and TR4W for Field Day. Many people are not used to setting this up for at the shared Field Day event, this is usually done ahead of time by others. But with operating from home, you might find a local instance handy for logging your Field Day contacts. This session will cover downloading, and installing each program and we will look at operating them both if you have never done that.
Details for the meeting are as follows:
Topic: N1MM and TR4W setup for Field Day
Time: May 30, 2020 10:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Only 16 Days left to register to ensure your meals
Do you like operating in the field but hate dripping in sweat while setting up antennas? Does the idea of enduring another Field Day constantly fighting off every mosquito in Tampa Bay make you wish they held Field Day in January? Well, you’re in luck! Winter Field Day is an event very similar to the June ARRL Field Day except—you guessed it—it’s held in Winter. Specifically January 25 & 26, 2020. This is the third time SPARC is participating in Winter Field Day and it is a joint operation with the Upper Pinellas Amateur Radio Club (UPARC) and the Clearwater Amateur Radio Society (CARS). The event will be held at the Clearwater Fire Training Facility on Belcher Road south of Sunset Point Road in Clearwater. Prior efforts were a great success. You can read about that here.
Winter Field Day is a 24 hour operating exercise where hams across the country go to the field, setup portable stations running on emergency power with temporary antennas. This event is not sponsored by the ARRL but the Winter Field Day Association instead. It has been operating since 2007 and gets bigger each year. There are several differences from the ARRL Field Day. Notably, there are only three classes of operation: (Outdoor, Indoor and Home). We will be operating outdoors (under cover) with 3 stations capable of SSB, digital modes like PSK31 and CW plus a satellite station. We have some preliminary plans but the most important thing we need now is for people to register. You can sign up by clicking here. As with summer Field Day, you will work stations operating from home and also indoors in non-traditional settings. But when you work outside stations in Minnesota, please try not to comment on how it is a chilly 65 degrees here. They may not share your amusement. 🙂
We have the radio and computers secured and a pretty good handle on the supplies as this is the fifth event we have done from this facility. We need people to help with putting things up, some people to help with food and of course, operators. Setup will begin at 9:00 AM on Saturday, 1/25. 3 radios will be going 24 hours from 2:00 PM Saturday to 2:00 PM on Sunday so we need people that can operate. No experience is necessary. If you are brand new to ham radio, you are welcome to come out and with a little training; you get to operate the radios. If you are interested in operating portable, you will get first hand experience in how to setup a station outside with no other infrastructure. Additionally, if you are interested in Emergency Communications, you have the opportunity to setup in a unusual location, operating radios on generator power. Note that is just like people had to do in Houston and Puerto Rico after the hurricanes so if you are an EMCOMM operator, this event is tailor made for you. Plus you will be on the grounds of the premiere fire training facility in the area.
As you may know, SPARC has scaled back its outside ARRL Field Day operations in June due to the difficulty of setting up the portable antennas in the heat—we’re not getting any younger. This is the perfect opportunity for anyone that misses that experience of setting up temporary antennas and operating radios in outside. The bonus is that instead of just one club, we have members of all different experience levels from all three clubs. Of course, we have some creature comforts in that we can use the facilities inside the Fire Training center, but all the operating is outside on generator power. While this is winter in Florida, you never know. Last year’s Winter Field Day was cold and rainy but very pleasant the year before so you never know what you will get.
Here is a Google Map to the location. This is centrally located to all three club’s members so we hope the facility proves to be a success for all.
Please sign up and let us know if you can bring anything. Again, we need mostly people to setup and operate. Don’t forget to bring anything you might need for the weekend. We have the radios in the form of an Elecraft K3 for CW/SSB and Digital, another K3 for SSB and a Kenwood TS590S for SSB. We also have computers. So please sign up now by clicking here.
Our friends in the north, the Upper Pinellas Amateur Radio Club, have for a long time done a monthly foray into a local park called UPARC in the Park. This is to setup radios/antennas and just get together for some outdoor fun. Since we all enjoy getting together at the “Field Days” with UPARC and CARS, we decided to do a joint Radio Clubs in the Park. On September 21, 2019, at Eagle Lake Park in Largo, we invite everyone to join us for Radio Clubs in the Park. CARS/SPARC/UPARC will once again team up to have a great day of operating in field type conditions. This is a more hands-on type activity and you are encouraged to bring any portable gear you have to setup. The setup and testing of gear is the important part. Of course, being hams, we will also have a picnic lunch with the clubs providing the main dish. Look for a sign-up sheet soon to put your name to bring something to make the picnic possible. Planned activities include a transmitter fox hunt (so bring your HT, directional 2m antenna and any other gear for that). We will also have a satellite demonstration with maybe even a contact or two.
Make plans now to attend Radio Clubs in the Park on September 21, 2019 at 9:00 AM at Shelter #4. We will go as long in the day as we want to hang around. This is sure to be a fun even you will not want to miss.
[Photo by Jeff NE4C]One could not have asked for better weather. An old standard is that ARRL Field Day is the fourth full weekend of rain in June. This year, that axiom proved false as there was not any rain in site the entire weekend. Of course, this being Florida, no rain at the tail end of June means heat—and it was HOT!
The three club banners on the big fire tower stairs [N2ESPhoto]
Antennas
Therefore, the antenna crew got an early start on Saturday June 22, raising the beam on the tall fire tower. The location was our now familiar Field Day site, the Clearwater Fire Training Center. The participants were members of the Clearwater ARS, the St. Petersburg ARC and the Upper Pinellas ARC.
The antenna crew raising the beam. [Photo by KN4LUZ]With the beam installed, next came the sloper, also installed from the tall tower. Rich AA2MF and crew installed a sloper, complete with auto-tuner, for all-band use.
Rick AA2MF working on a sloper remote tuner. [Photo by KN4LUZ]On the other fire tower, Rich and team also installed another sloper. You can see the tall tower with the beam in the background of the picture below.
Rolling out the coax on the smaller fire tower. [Photo by KN4LUZ]An off-center fed dipole completed the HF antenna array. With the outside work completed for antennas, the attention could be turned to the inside operating theater. Something we have learned is that while operating Field Day in tents and open-air pavilions has a certain nostalgic element, dealing with the heat and bug limits the number of participants. Therefore, to encourage participation of all club members, we setup the stations inside, making operating a bit more comfortable.
Radios
For the radios, we used two Elecraft K3 transceivers and a Kenwood TS590SG. One K3 was dedicated to CW and the other two radios were used on SSB and FT8. Computer logging was done with TR4W networked together sending data to the Raspberry Pi display on the big screen.
All three HF stations. Glenn N4ESU (foreground) and Lisa KC1YL at a SSB station, Tom W4CU (standing) and David KR4U at the CW station, Will W7WMS at the other SSB station (rear) [N2ESPhoto]Making lots of contacts [N2ESPhoto]David KR4U at the CW station and Tom NY4I trying to make the FT8 station work [N2ESPhoto].Kenny K4OB at the CW station and Tom NY4I at the SSB station (apparently FT8 will have to wait…) [N2ESPhoto]
Jack N4KIN (far left), Dave WA3VRE(hands in pockets), Glen N4GRC (blue shirt), Ron KP2N operating rear, Lisa KC1YL and Tom W4CU at CW station, Steve N4FOY at SSB station (front) [N2ESPhoto]Paul KC4YDY at the 6 meter station [N2ESPhoto].As usual, the team ate well. All meals are provided by group. Led by Dave KG4CNG’s pulled pork and Kevin manning the grill. Covered dishes provided by the attendees rounded out the feast.
Kevin (no call) manning the grill [N2ESPhoto]
Bonus Points
Part of Field Day is bonus points. We picked up quite a few of those. We had all emergency power, a sign-in table, Add lots of pictures.
Alan W4UB with Cathie Perkins, the Pinellas County Emergency Manager [N2ESPhoto]Jeff NE4C (left) and Ron W4RFA at the sign-in table [N2ESPhoto]Tom NY4I made use of his Icom 9700 and satellite beam to work W4MLB in south Florida on the CAS-4B satellite. Gerry WR6N was turning the antenna on that pass. This was the fifth attempt with Tom and Paul KA4IOX making attempts all throughout the early morning hours.
Icom 9700 for the satellite bonus [N2ESPhoto]Satellite antenna for satellite bonus [N2ESPhoto]
Pat AA0O conducting an education presentation on antennas analyzers [N2ESPhoto]
So how did we do?
The group made a similar number of contacts as last year. This year there were 1,077 QSOs with a just bit more than half in SSB contacts (611). Last year, we did 1171 QSOs. That difference is just about the number of 6m contacts last year due to better band conditions. So all in all, we made about the same number of QSOs. Bonus points were about the same too as we achieved our major goals of the W1AW bulletin, satellite contact and solar power contacts. This year we did NOT have an elected official but we did add an educational session thanks to Pat AA0O.
We had 28 hams making contacts this year as compared to 24 last year so participation continues to grow. We contest scoring stats can be found in our SH5 score analyzer here.
Our many thanks…
Events like this do NOT just happen. Field Day requires an immense amount of planning and thought. The Field Day planning committee met no fewer than 8 times on a conference bridge along with many other sessions such as the dry-run, coax cable installation and one-on-one phone calls. Alan W4UB, club president of UPARC, led the team this year with assistance from the following:
CARS: Jeff NE4C, Dave KG4CNG, Ron W4RFA
SPARC: Rich AA2MF, Pat AA0O, Lisa KC1YL and Tom NY4I
UPARC: Alan W4UB, Jason N4BOZ, Gerry WR6N, Glenn N4ESU, Ken WK4KM
While the members are listed from their respective clubs (although many of us belong to two or all three), it is important to know this is a joint effort and the greater group becomes paramount versus the individual clubs. Again, thanks to everyone that made this a success.
