[amsat-bb] Field Day summary

["Ronald Nutter" <rnutter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I dont feel so bad after seeing the challenges that others went through working the sats on field day.  I lost the better part of saturday troubleshooting cabling/radio problems.  The person who was to bring the generator pulled a no-show, so we had to run 2 radios off of a 100amp hour gell cell.

SO-50 was a disaster.  Every pass I could hear sounded like the old days of CB where everybody was talking and nobody listening.  Hear AO-27 on one pass and it did open up but there was so much traffic, I couldnt get in, same with SO-50.  I could hear FO-29 but couldnt get enough signal up to it to where I could hear myself.

Hear ISS on several passes but couldnt get him to hear me using either Region 1 or 2 uplink frequencies.  Would have been nice to known ahead of time that they were thinking about trying UHF so I could have tried that. Hopefully Echo being there next year will alleviate the congestion a little (probably not but I can dream cant I ?).

This year was very frustrating for me.  I took out my IC910H and due to an antenna problem early in the year where the antennas came crashing down on the ground and got bent a little bit, I bought spare antennas for field day, a spare 440 preamp and a new 2m preamp so I could work AO-7.  Oh well, now to start practicing a little more on operating and hopefully do better for next year.

Trying to find a local welder in my area that can help me make a mount to go on top of the 40 ft pneumatic mast that is in a minivan I acquired from a television station recently.  Should be a nice mobile platform to work the sats from.

Ron
Ka4kyi


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