Field Day 2011
RVARC Field Day — June 25 & 26, 2011
We’re still in the planning phase for field day this year. As usual, most of the organizing effort happens during the month of June. I’ll be sending out planning emails shortly. The Jackson County ARES may join us this year—their club was going to vote on the matter, but I have not heard the outcome yet.
Carl VanOrden and Scott Cummings have secured a site—it’s the city of Medford Table Rock Park, which is also the Cascade Christian athletic field. The entrance is at the end of Gilman St. just west of Biddle road north of Hwy 62. The field is bordered by Table Rock road on the west (but there’s no access via Table Rock road). The GPS coordinates of the entrance are: 42 21’ 52" N and 122 52’ 56" W
Herb Grey and I scouted out the site several weeks ago—it’s flat, has grassy areas, and a few trees.
We will plan to setup on Friday afternoon (June 24th) and operate from 11:00 AM Saturday morning until 11:00 AM Sunday morning, and tear-down Sunday afternoon.
If there is enough interest, we’ll try to find a CW and a Phone captain to schedule operators. Last year we had two transmitters. This year we may go back to three transmitters if there are enough people interested.
From the June 2011 issue of The Repeater.
Field Day 2011
From the September 2011 issue of The Repeater.
This year our club held field day jointly with the Jackson County ARES group at Table Rock park in Medford. Thanks to Carl Van Orden, W7BRO for coordinating the use of the field with the city of Medford and Cascade Christian High School, and Scott Cummings, KD7EHB for coordinating our field day committee this year. Everyone agreed that the park was a terrific location - large field, mowed grass, and shade trees. Hopefully we will be able to use it again in the future. We used 4 tents and a cover to provide for operating positions. The weather cooperated, being probably the best Field Day weather that I can remember in 45+ years.
Our operation this year was W7DTA category 3A—three transmitters, club or non-club group. We set up two CW stations and one phone station. Per the rules, we were allowed to operate a GOTA (Get On The Air) station using Scott’s callsign KD7EHB, and a VHF/UHF station without adding to our transmitter count.
The main CW antenna was the club’s TH5 antenna, assembled a little bit crooked (in order to improve the circular polarization I’ve been told) on a crank up tower about 35 feet up. The other CW antenna was a dual-band 80/40 meter dipole, that did not seem to work too well on 40 meters. It was converted Saturday night into a 40 meter dipole. The Phone station used an elevated 10-40 vertical antenna (that does not require ground wires) which worked quite well. the GOTA station was set up with a ground mounted trap vertical. Ed Vaughn held down the 6 meter SSB position with a 4-element yagi (an 8-element Yagi with the 4 front directors removed).
Originally the phone tent was right next to CW#1, but the interference between stations on the same or adjacent bands was too much, and we moved the phone tent to the other side of the park about 650 feet away mid Saturday-afternoon. We used the caterpillar method— we left the cover set up, and moved the cover, table, equipment etc., by a large team of many legs. This fixed the inter-station interference problem almost completely, enough to avoid any significant problems.
Scott went all-out this year to secure bonus points, and we claimed 980 bonus points. The GOTA station and contacts, public information (did you see the nice handouts?) and public location helped us increase these points compared to previous years. Additionally we originated 4 messages, including one to our Oregon SM, and Bud Larson, W7LNG copied the field day message on CW.
There was a barbeque Saturday night; thanks to all who contributed food, cook stove, propane, etc.
This year we were hoping that 10 and 15 meters might open a bit more than last year—but the signals were non existent on 10 meters, and weak on 15m. We made a few 15 meter contacts, many of those were a struggle due to the low signal levels. A few east coast stations were able to get good runs going on 15 meters, but those were mostly east coast to midwest, with few apparently pointing antennas to the far west. Again this year we did not make any 80 meter contacts.
20 meters and 40 meters were the workhorse bands, not only for our club, but for the rest of the USA and Canada it seems. 6 meters did not have any appreciable openings this year.
We had about 15 hams, and 20 others at the site sometime during the event for a total of 35 participants. Overall, we submitted the package to ARRL claiming 4364 points.
| Mode | 6 meters | 15 meters | 20 meters | 40 meters | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CW | 45 | 379 | 115 | 539 | |
| Phone | 23 | 10 | 121 | 346 | 500 |
| GOTA (phone) | 11 | 9 | 82 | 102 |
Field Day 2011 Results
From the December 2011 issue of The Repeater.
It seems like 5 months ago we had Field Day. Well, it actually has been 5 months ago! The results have been published in December 2011 QST. In addition, the ARRL has posted the results in an on-line database that can be queried. Given that there were 2666 entries, it’s about the only practical way to narrow the data to something of interest.
W7DTA participated in class 3A—three transmitters (+VHF/UHF +GOTA). The table shows the results for 3A in Oregon—we placed second. Interestingly, all 3A entries in Oregon chose to enter power class 2—100 watts. In one other category we did even better—we had 35 participants involved in one way or another during the event.
3A Oregon—all Power Categories
| # | Call | Score | Category | QSOs | Power Mult | GOTA Call | Section | Participants | Club |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | N7LE | 6,794 | 3A | 1,713 | 2 | OR | 15 | CODXC | |
| 2 | W7DTA | 4,364 | 3A | 1,147 | 2 | KD7EHB | OR | 35 | RVARC & JCARES |
| 3 | W7SST | 1,840 | 3A | 481 | 2 | OR | 3 | ||
| 4 | W7EUG | 1,656 | 3A | 403 | 2 | OR | 22 | LCSARO | |
| 5 | K7LIX | 1,570 | 3A | 324 | 2 | WM7K | OR | 26 | Southern Oregon ARC |
| 6 | W7GRA | 1,180 | 3A | 342 | 2 | OR | 7 | Grande Ronde Radio Amateurs Assn | |
| 7 | W7BU | 1,122 | 3A | 125 | 2 | OR | 15 | Sunset Empire ARC |
