Field Day 2012 Location: Washington Monument State Park (Middletown, Maryland) Date:
June 23-24, 2012
The crew: 2012 attendees (left to right): N3IC, K3MZ, AJ1DM, WA3PYU, N2AW, W3CID (above Bob), WA3OFC, AG6DF, Logan; Not shown: WA3IRQ, KG4NXZ, WA3LTJ, KB3UNL, KN3U, and behind camera KA3VXM Setting Up
Frank and crew assembling a tribander mounted on the "Rocket Launcher" tower; Paul gets coax ready. Meanwhile, Bob works on the VHF/UHF tower. Antennas
The 20 meter yagi beam on Frank's novel "ladder" tower; Paul's VHF/UHF tower and antennas.
A cellphone extender antenna; the lower dipole. (No pics this year of the 80 meter vee or the Moxon) Power
Logan brought the missing-in-action WA3SOR's generator and gas cans.
The solar panel charging nicads for the "Natural Power Source" contacts; Victor's sophisticated portable battery charging systems! Operating Lots of "operating" going on -- at left, Paul runs the CW station; John and Frank at the "Usurper" station; Mike on phone. At right Victor runs GOTA.
Top QSO-rate cw op N2AW can run the freq with his eyes closed; W3CID at GOTA; WA3KLK flew up to Maryland for FD, but injury put him on the DL before it even began -- he had to return to Florida (don't tell him that his mike isn't attached to a transmitter).
After extensive antenna work, WA3OFC operates phone; K3MZ on phone with Victor observing.
N3IC on cw; AG6DF and Logan at GOTA
Lest we not forget K3MZ at the VHF/UHF station... Report from the other end... Here's a twist: W6VCE in San Diego made a video of his contact with us! A chance for us to hear what we sound like to others. Jason writes:
Thank you for the field day contact. A buddy of mine and I operated W6VCE for field day this year. W6VCE is a club vanity call we obtained many years ago in memory of an old fellow who was very well known in Southern California back in the 1980’s. Anyway, I was able to capture a couple minutes of video using my smartphone, and in doing so, we have live action of us (W6VCE) contacting you (N3IC) on 20m cw. At the very end of the video we inserted a sound clip of our old friend Jim, W6VCE. Not relevant to you or my email today, but you may wonder what the heck is going on at the end of the video if I didn’t tell you in advance. FYI – Found your FD 2012 webpage. I used to live in Northern Virginia (1988 to 1990). It’s so beautiful and green there compared to the brown yuck of San Diego shrubs. I did not get to Maryland much when I lived back there, but I sure enjoyed Northern VA. I hope your group enjoyed field day this year as much as ours did. 73! Jason, NF6E - on behalf of the very small W6VCE field day team. He used a Yaesu FT-857D using 20m ham stick and 20 watts, powered by 7ah lead acid battery, not vehicle battery.
From our log: Relaxing
Lee chats with Gordon -- who knew that 40 years later and 3000 miles away from Randallstown, they would end up living mere blocks from each other! WA3IRQ with Frank, with whom there's more to catch up on.
Food
Overnight
Visit by Politician
Maryland state Senator Chris Shank brings his son who makes a GOTA contact (plus we get the bonus points) We went with two transmitters. QSO breakdown: 80 cw - 190 QSO's: 1373 cw x 2 =
2746 + 1413 phone = 4159 x 2 = 8318
Tracking results from N1MM: QSO Point Operator Stats
Look at the Operators worksheet in the
Logs & Analysis spreadsheet for breakdowns by band, mode, operator, bonus point allocation, pie charts, QSO rates, and more
(operator rankings including bonus points differ slightly). A few reports from N1MM: Field Day - 2012-06-23 1800Z to 2012-06-24 2100Z [these are messed up and wrong due to mixed log files] Field Day - 2011-06-25 1800Z to 2011-06-26 2100Z - 225 GOTA QSOs GOTA (K3MZ call) Max Rates: 2012-06-23 1902Z - 2.0 per minute (1 minute(s)), 120 per hour by KG4NXZ 2012-06-23 1923Z - 1.2 per minute (10 minute(s)), 72 per hour by KG4NXZ GOTA (K3MZ call) Runs (holding a frequency with CQ) >10 QSOs: 2012-06-23 1916 - 1947Z, 7238 kHz, 32 Qs, 62.1/hr KG4NXZ --- Results from December 2012 QST --- This was our highest cw score ever. See the RARC Home Page for comparisons.
We scored thirteenth out of 407 (96.8 percentile) in the 2A category. We had the highest score in the Atlantic Division (DEL, MDC, EPA, WPA, NNY, WNY, SNJ). (The overall 2A high score was 15,470 -- ours was 9,648)
Here are the 2012 FD Weblog notes. You can open them in the main browser window by clicking this.
(Photos by Logan, AJ1DM, K3MZ, N3IC. Designed to be viewable in 1024 width resolution) |