RRVARC FD 2023 Summary
Well folks, another RRVARC Field Day has come and gone. I hope everyone had as much fun as I did!
This year was another typical Texas hot summer weather event.
If you want to compare the FD overall weekend weather to last year:
2023 High Temperature – 95°
2022 High Temperature – 100°
2023 Low Temperature – 79°
2022 Low Temperature – 77°
It seems like it was hotter this year however it was actually both hotter and colder last year.
We were mostly sunny both years however there was a brief rain shower or two in 2022 while we were dry this year.
With the use of Phillip’s man-lift we were able to get the halyards installed on the parking lot light poles and the pavilion for the two HF wire antennas. This was a good accomplishment!
We had three stations operational this year:
Chris WB5YPO
Mark W5PTX
Cindy/Charles WA5VHU
Our numbers looked like this:
Total Contacts by Band and Mode:
Band CW Dig Phone Total %
80 0 0 4 4 2
40 0 0 65 65 25
20 7 0 177 184 72
15 0 0 3 3 1
Total 7 0 249 256 100
For the WA5VHU station listening around it seemed that 40 and 20 meters were the hot bands but the rest of the bands were dead for the most part. We found only 3 stations to make FD contacts with on 15 meters and only 4 stations on 80 meters. Nobody on 160 meters. We called a lot on these bands and got little or nothing in the way of replies.
Parking Lot Light Pole Antenna Issue:
The antenna the WA5VHU station was using was the eastern one of the 2 new random length dipoles using the parking lot light poles and the pavilion for supports. The wire across the parking lot is one half of the dipole while the other half of the antenna is the pavilion itself. As it turns out the pavilion is very noisy electrically, resulting in a S9 noise level. I had to disconnect the pavilion from the antenna feedline and used the remaining wire across the parking lot as an end-fed wire. This was not an optimal setup and I’m sure it had something to do with the lower number of contacts from this station. Another issue is that I (Charles) was really worn out after putting up the halyards and other equipment and this reduced my operating energy. Hopefully next year the antennas will go up quicker.
For the parking lot light pole antennas I think we should switch to using 80 through 6 meter Off-Center Fed (OCF) antennas. Using an OCF antenna would place the offset feed point closer to the pavilion and drop the coax down into the grass near the pavilion and not into the parking lot. I will post an artist deception for it separately from this post. Using an OCF also means we may not need a tuner with the antennas, or at most the tuner built into many models of modern HF radios if necessary.
The map of contacts is shown below. It looks like we got all states except Alaska, Delaware, Nebraska and Nevada and we missed a few Sections in a few states. We got two provinces in Canada and we also made contact with Guam and Cost Rica!
The log and information has been submitted to the ARRL and they say our numbers are:
Summary
Call Used: W5W GOTA Station Call: (NONE) ARRL/RAC Section: NTX Class: 3A
Participants: 27 Club/Group Name: Red River Valley Amateur Radio Club
Power Source(s): Generator, Battery, Solar
Power Multiplier: 2X
Preliminary Total Score: 1,676
Bonus Points:
100% emergency power – 300
Media publicity – 100
Public location – 100
Public information table – 100
Formal message to ARRL SM/SEC – 100
Natural power QSOs completed – 100
Site visit by invited served agency – 100
Safety officer – 100
Social media – 100
Entry submitted via web – 50
Total bonus points – 1,150
Score Summary – Cabrillo log/dupe sheet file: W5W.dup
CW Digital Phone Total
Total QSOs 7 0 249
Total Points 14 0 249 263
Claimed Score = (QSO points x power mult) = 526
See you all next year!!!
Charles WA5VHU
