Amateur Radios Annual Open House
June 22 – 23
Images from Field Day 2019
Click on image for full view!
Kathi and I were going over some contact lists that read correctly have very useful information. One example is “Which Antenna performed best?” as it turns out the Radiowavz Off Center Fed Di-pole was the best overall performer. We made a contact with Illinois, our farthest contact on field day. I’m sure 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 sites in southern California are NOT easily acquired on short notice, being the busiest destination for vacationing in the world. We need to make a decision soon and get our reservation in early. It may be the time to form a Field Day Committee, yet another team discussion. The work never ends for a busy/active Radio Club. I’ll see Ya’ all at the next General Meeting ’73 Ken KC6WOK
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.
“How To” YouTube videos on the IC-7300
MFJ-969 antenna tuner operation
MFJ-464 CW KEYER/READER
Yaesu FT-991A for our station 2
Two of our members after upgrading to Amateur General decided to expand their Shacks with new HF rigs, Jack Sklar KM6UNQ and Bruce VanBuskirk KM6WBI both chose the Yaesu FT-991A for its multiband capability, spectrum scope, ease of use etc. I have included the operators manual and some video reviews to help get our operators familiar with these radios.
Our planned GOTA station equipment
Station 4 (GOTA station) radio= Icom IC-7100 Multi-band Multi-Mode radio connected to a LDG Auto-tuner fed by a G5RV junior antenna, since this radio has no spectrum scope or pan adapter we will add a SDRplay receiver and large screen allowing operators to view an entire band to find active frequencies. This station will be SSB only and will be powered by “mains” from the RV park.