ARRL Field Day - 2019
Call: K8TE
Operator(s): K8TE
Station: K8TE
Class: 1B LP
QTH: New Mexico
Operating Time (hrs): 14
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Dig Qs
----------------------------
160:
80: 7 2
40: 366 25
20: 322 1
15: 46 2
10:
6:
2:
222:
432:
903:
1.2:
2.3:
3.4:
5.7:
10G:
24G:
----------------------------
Total: 741 30 771 Total Score = 3,674
Club:
Comments:
Hoping for another op or two, we ended up with just me and my wife, Judy,
supervising. We had hoped to attend Ham Radio in Friedrichshafen, but that
didn't happen. Nobody else in the club wanted to lead the effort, so the two of
us took the RV to the Jemez Mountains and had a great time. I should have
changed N1MM+ to "1B"; oh well.
We setup in an area that turned out to be a no camping zone. However, after
seeing the "Amateur Radio Emergency Communications" banner of the side
of the trailer, the ranger gave us the OK to spend the weekend. We setup the
Inverted L I had used on the county activation trip to and from HamVention.
With the antenna launcher safe at home, I climbed about 40 ft. into a couple of
pine trips to lift the fan dipole.
In spite of their being "no HF propagation" (the current consensus)
the RBN proved I was getting out. There was deep, rapid fading on all bands.
Either antenna could be better than the other, especially on 20m. The noise
level was surprisingly high (S3-S5) in spite of being away from civilization.
It was not self-generated, but perhaps from nearby campers.
My planned nap Saturday morning didn't happen. By 2:30 Sunday morning I was
cold and tired, thus missing out on the hoped for 24 hours straight through.
With the QSO rate slowing down below 25/hour, the warm RV bed called loudly.
We earned a few bonus points which helped make up for taking seven hours off. I
thought it was interesting few callers would wait for me to complete a contact
when I had a "pileup." This was true whether I had a quick exchange
or not. I'm betting they spent more time tuning and waiting to work another op
than if they had waited to work me.
SSB was too painful to spend much time there. With just a dipole or end-fed, I
never got a run going on SSB. Obviously, the SSB ops hadn't seen Bill's, AE6JV,
"Please Copy" badge with the red circle and line through those words.
We need more contesters to coach FD ops in making fast contacts.
I thought the CW bands were relatively empty compared with previous years. I'm
betting many of those ops moved to FT8 this year. I noticed that bandwidth was
full of signals, many of them nastily over-driven. I suspect using FT8 with an
extra rig or two will help some groups ramp up their scores in this and future
years. Will we have a category for single ops with multiple transmitters next?
With smoke from a fire in AZ plus a local prescribed burn, I was prepared to
disconnect the antennas and rapidly leave the area. Fortunately, the smoke
withered away and the local burn remained under control. Teardown was much
faster without the beam and AB/577 to take down. We returned home in record
time and were much more rested than in recent years. Still, I missed the fun of
the multi-op type event. 73, Bill, K8TE
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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