Field Day 2016
RVARC Field Day, 2016—At Science Works in Ashland
The Rogue Valley Amateur Radio Club Field Day for 2016 will be held at Science Works Hands-on Museum in Ashland. We will be using the north side of their lot, bordering Campus Way. We have a press release drafted and agreed with Science Works.
The Museum is located at 1500 E. Main St. This is near the more southerly of the two Ashland exits off of Interstate 5 (exit # 14). I clocked the drive at 10 miles one way from east Medford.
Setup begins on Friday afternoon, June 24, teardown is Sunday 11 AM, June 26. The actual operating event is 11 AM Saturday through 11 AM Sunday.
We will have a GOTA station this year. RVARC will have an information booth located near the entrance to the museum, and have handouts and be available to discuss Science, Ham Radio, and what Field Day is all about. Science Works is open Daily 10 AM to 6 PM in the summer, so we will try to staff the booth during the time when the Museum is open and Field Day operation is underway.
There is a parking lot at the end of Campus Way for the Science Museum.
From the June 2016 issue of The Repeater.
RVARC Field Day 2016, K7M 3A OR
From the September 2016 issue of The Repeater.
The Rogue Valley Amateur Radio Club held our Field Day event this year at Science Works in Ashland. Science Works was a great host, providing advertising, listing on their event calendar, lots of visitors, and a good physical site.
We setup the antennas, towers, and trailers on Friday afternoon, and commenced operation Saturday at 11 AM. We also had a meet and greet table near the front doors of Science Works, where we handed out literature, provided contact information, and conducted several tutorials on the ionosphere and the science behind HF propagation. There were also handouts / pages with QR codes so those with mobile phones could quickly go to our club webpage, Joe Gunderson’s training classes webpage, and to the exam sessions listing on our webpage.
Several visitors were well-versed in propagation and asked good questions later Friday afternoon. They returned Saturday to continue the discussion! Both turned out to be local FM radio broadcast engineers, they really liked talking about the science.
There was a covered area where our GOTA station was set up, and where visitors could have an actual QSO themselves, talk about amateur licensing, tests, and classes. Dan Curtis, N6WN did a great job helping 5 kids and one mom conduct their first HF radio contact. Mom seemed to be the most thrilled of the group!
We had a sign-up list, many folks asked to receive a copy of the next club newsletter and information about the club meetings.
In the facilities department, Mike Bach, WB6FFC pulled another couple of rabbits out of his hat (again) and came up with the fire safety equipment that the Ashland Fire Department required us to have.
In the radio department, Mike provided a tribander and the crank-up tower/trailer, while Scott, NA7OM provided his AB-577 tower and tribander. We spent much of Friday afternoon raising, lowering, raising, lowering Scotts tower until all the guys were reasonably straight and taut. This was a case where 12 people helping may have been too much as we had a difficult time getting things straight and equalized.
A couple of 40m dipoles rounded out the antenna farm, along with Mike’s 80m vertical.
John Laybourne, W8WOM provided a toyhauler RV for the CW station, with enough room to put a full-sized table in the rear and setup several CW stations. This worked superbly as Allan Taylor, K7GT and Dick Lemke, AD7AF racked up a large collection of CW contacts on 20 and 40 meters. The RV was in shade all day, and operating temperatures were far more comfortable than the thermal event we had in 2015.
Mike provided his travel trailer for the phone station, and it was constantly busy.
In the public area, there was a full-time digital station going, working RTTY and PSK31 QSOs anchored by Chris Duncan, N7CGD. John Armstrong, KF7UMK assembled a solar charging station to accord us huge number of solar powered QSOs.
This year we entered 3A category. Our submission to the ARRL had to be completed in just under one month, and we submitted a claimed score of:
| CW | Digital | Phone | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total QSOs | 615 | 78 | 800 | |
| Total Points | 1230 | 156 | 800 | 2186 |
Claimed QSO Score = 4,372
Plus bonus points of 1,150 for a total claimed score of 5,522 points.
Rita Derbas, KI6SSQ staffed our public information booth. Dan Curtis, N6WN staffed the GOTA station, while Chris Duncan, N7CGD orchestrated digital modes. Our GOTA station was busy with visitors all Friday and Saturday.
Field Day Results
From the December 2016 issue of The Repeater.
Field Day results for 2016 were released by ARRL. The December issue of QST contains the contest write-up. Our score was the top 3A entry in the state.
Even though our 2016 Field Day was more of a public outreach event, our operators worked hard and made a large number of contacts again this year.
