Field Day 2019

Beautiful grassy site with LOTs of room for ANTENNAs!!
Vic KM6RWB (Red White & Blue)
We found the Diamond HF Vertical to be better at receiving than “Contacts” )c:
GOTAhams ready for Field Day
James W6FRQ Hosts a visiting family and gets a future Ham On The Air,
Bruce KM6WBI relaxing/Snacking
Bruce KM6WBI working with Chuck KM6CKV
Bob KM6OWV with Grace KM6LJL and Mark KM6AHY (our VP & club call sign Trustee)
Bob KM6OWV enjoying lunch
“How does this antenna go up?”
Long John pole for the OCF Dipole support.
Chuck KM6CKV enjoying GOTAhams Hospitality
Chris KI6AMK with Ken KC6WOK
Vilma Arlotti, Our AMAZING Hospitality Officer building Lunch!
It took a while for the overcast to burn off, we helped with RF!
James, one of our visitors, building some “Snap Circuits”
Ken KC6WOK (our Pres.) posting to Social media and updating the GOTAhams Website.
James, Vic and Ken setting up the GOTA station
Mark making contacts with the Icom IC-7300
Bob and Mark at Station 1
Marks Duties included “Safety Officer”
James with Son Samuel threading a “Morse Code necklace”
Mark and Vilma staking the end of our Off Center Fed Di-pole
Looks like Mark is checking our GOTA station for “Safety”
Mark KM6AHY with Scott KG6ABF and Kathi KD6CAF
Another Shot of the “Goat Herd”
Samuel practicing for future “Safety Officer”

The Radiowavz Off Center Fed Di-pole was the best overall performer. We made a contact with Illinois, our farthest contact on field day. We will have some further discussions about what seemed to work and things we may want to change. Overall we seemed to do well for our first time out as a new Radio Club. The GOTAhams were well fed, it was the social event that we planned for and our “Emergency Power” being purely Solar was silent, No generator noise, fumes or refueling. All these things add up to a very successful event and it is already time to plan for the next one.

Field day Station equipment

Our main Station @ WG6OTA 2A-LAX

Station 1 (contest station) radio= Icom IC-7300 connected to a MFJ Deluxe Versa Tuner II model MFJ-959 fed by a RadioWavz DX-80-OCF dipole (hopefully some other options as well) Powered by the battery bank in the GOTAhome charged by our 530 watts of solar array. Plans are to connect a laptop for digital modes, and a MFJ-464 Keyer/Reader for CW with a Bencher paddle and a keyboard for a CW cheater.

Station 2: FT991A

For station 2 we chose the FT991A for it multi-band capability, spectrum scope, ease of use, etc.

Gota Station equipment

For our Gota station we chose our IC-7100 connected to a LDG auto-tuner feeding a G5RV antenna.