[3830] ARRL FD K7IA 1B QRP
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Tue Jul 1 00:59:33 EDT 2014
ARRL Field Day
Call: K7IA
Operator(s): K7IA
Station: K7IA
Class: 1B QRP
QTH: NM
Operating Time (hrs): 11
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Dig Qs
----------------------------
160:
80: 7
40: 66
20: 368
15: 46
10:
6:
2:
222:
432:
903:
1.2:
2.3:
3.4:
5.7:
10G:
24G:
----------------------------
Total: 487 0 0 Total Score = 4,870
Club: Virden Contest Club
Comments:
Plus Bonus points for emerg power, alternate power (solar), ARRL Bulletin, etc.
What's a Field Day without puzzles to solve?
For Erin and me, FD offers a chance to get away from June heat in SW New Mexico
and head north to higher mountains (8000 feet plus) for cooler temps. We
decided to return to a new site near Alpine, AZ, where I did last month's 7QP
as SO Single County Expedition. That event was the maiden voyage of a new Air
Boss
Launcher, which easily placed wire antennas higher in the treetops than the old
slingshot ever had. The slingshot is now bronzed!
We hit the road on Wednesday to get a couple of extra days of cooler goofing
off, and we arrived at the 7QP site at suppertime, only to find it packed with
tents, trailers, people, dogs, and more. We like the quiet life, despite 100
points for "public places!" We had supper, hit the sack (after
watching the final game of the College World Series on satellite TV), and on
Thurs AM, we hit the road back to New Mexico to a FD site we had used for many
years. Our last FD there was several years ago, and we knew we would have
those (taller) trees to ourselves.
After parking the truck-mounted slide-in camper, I unpacked the gear, laying
verything out in a "smart, shipshape, and seamanlike manner," as we
used to say in the Navy. Then I wanted to give the Air Boss a few shots into
the treetops to practice "shooting from the hip" at choice branches.
Despite writing, rewriting, reviewing, and pondering packing lists for Field Day
and portable ops, one component was missing--a quick connect coupling between a
portable 120 vac air compressor and the short hose attached to the air chuck for
the Boss. Drat! I had it for the 7QP, so where is it? So we threw the gear
into the camper and headed to the hardware store in Springerville, AZ, about an
hour away, in the hopes True Value had what I needed. They did, and we had a
nice eyeball with the owner for about a half hour as well.
I should mention that the eastern approach to Springerville on Hwy 180 tops
over a tall ridgeline, affording a wonderful view of everything westward.
Prominent on the western horizon, somewhere between Springerville and Show Low,
was the smoke of an obvious wildfire. "Prescribed Burns" are common
events in the Western US, and they are used by Forest Service to rid the target
areas of scrub and slash, reducing wildfire potential for spread.
That was the topic that began our conversation at True Value, but the owner was
unaware of burns in the location we described. Following our stop at the
hardware store, I took Erin to luncheon, and when we finished some 45 minutes
later, it was obvious that the fire we had observed had grown significantly.
Sure 'nuff, we checked the Internet last night after arriving home that the
fire had begun about 15-30 minutes before we initially saw it's smoke, and it's
now known as the San Juan Fire in Arizona.
Erin and I have an odd association with wildfires, it seems. In 2011, the
Wallow Fire of western AZ began about three weeks after we did a 7QP County
Line Expedition south of Alpine, AZ. That was a huge fire, and, among other
things, it consumed our wonderful county line site, never to be used again.
Last June, on Erin's birthday, a lightning induced fire began about five miles
from our off grid, solar house. Erin saw the hot stroke and the smoke, and she
reported the fire. That one is known as the Silver Fire, and at it's peak, over
700 firefighters were on the scene. It burned to within 3 miles of our QTH, but
we were never required to evacuate (but we did move some of our "important
stuff" to neighbors' about six miles away. It was weird to hit the sack
at night and look at the bright orange glow atop the Black Range, only a few
miles away.
More? You bet! After only seven hours of op time in the 7QP last month, Erin
once again spotted smoke rising from what appeared to be 2-4 miles away. I
reported it via 2m FM through the EEARS repeater link in Alpine, and then we
packed up and got out of Dodge. See my 3830 post and also Andy's, KK7AC, for
more of that story. That was the Cameron Fire, started by improper disposal of
ashes (fireplace? BBQ?).
I digress, but the American West is bone dry from drought, and now you know why
we didn't want to remain with the other campers at our 7QP site.
Back to Field Day camp from Springerville, and back to Air Boss practice shots
and the next FD problem: the 3000 watt Honda generator, which worked perfectly
in May to power the little air compressor at 7QP just would not start the
unloaded compressor. Some fault detector just kept on tripping, and I kept on
trying. Bloody electronics--who needs them! Finally, with some
"patience," the generator's electronics must have warmed up enough so
that the compressor wouldn't kill the generator. The Air Boss is a great
instrument, but it will not function without compressed air! Once the Honda
and the compressor became friends, I simply ran the two for the rest of the
afternoon, until it was time to start raising antennas. On Thursday evening,
we got my homebrew wire Moxon
Rectangles for 20 and 15 meters into two pairs of Ponderosa Pines situated so
that the major lobes pointed 060 degrees true (line between trees 150). The
vees for 40 and 80 would have to wait until Friday, when I did the
patience/warm-up thing again.
I worked some nice EU DX on 20m Thurs evening, and I kept my near weekly sked
with M5LRO on Friday AM on 15m, so I knew the mechanical improvements I had
made in the recent 10 days hadn't degraded performance.
I took a number of photos of the Moxons to show how I constructed them. For
quite some time I have thought about submitting a paper to QST describing my
approach, and considering the number of weak 1B and 2B stations worked on
Saturday, others could benefit from having Moxon Rectangles, even if they have
shorter trees and/or slingshots. Construction is straightforward and cheap,
and only two supports are required. Sorry, it's not rotatable, but the beam
width is respectably large. Drop an email to me if you are interested--your
interest
will give me the nudge...
Once on the air at FD's starting time, 20 quickly filled with wall to wall
signals, as usual. I went to 15m to find an empty Run frequency (the real test
of QRP power and it's antenna system is can I "hold" a Run frequency?
I never really found out on 15, because the indices were poor, and the sparse
signals proved it.
Back to 20, which was little better until mid afternoon local. I had some nice
runs of 70-80 per hour, but what really got to me was how uncomfortable it is to
sit at the dinette of a slide-in truck camper. The tabletop was nicely laid out
with gear, but I had to take frequent breaks just to work the kinks out of my
lumbar area. This has been a problem for years for me, growing worse year by
year, and not because of the dinette's seat "cushion" either! One
thing that has helped a bit was a gel-filled cushion that is perfectly
butt-sized (we saw it on TV and found it at WalMart, but the trouble was
"seat cushion" did not make it onto my equipment check list).
40 and 80m were noisy, as usual in the early evening. Perhaps they quieted
down in the wee hours, but I wasn't there to find out. At midnight local, I
had had enough of the lumbar discomfort and called it quits, ending what I had
intended to be my first serious run at FD since 2009, which I did from the same
location
(730 QSOs). Erin says I've been burning the candle at both ends since
"our" wildfire last summer, and that may be part of it, but I think
age has finally crept up on me and my stamina. Drat, a tough realization,
indeed!
The good news is, I was never bumped from my run frequencies, even though a few
tried, and a few called QRL (boy, do I love the chaps who do that!). So, with a
handful of watts and some tall trees, appropriately aligned, wire Moxon
Rectangles are the ticket. I've been using them since 2006, making
improvements along the way. The latest quantum jump is height above ground,
thanks to the Air Boss, so here is my unsolicited endorsement: The Boss
propels a 2 oz. fishing sinker reportedly up to 200 feet above ground (with a
chamber
pressure of 70 psig, the max recommended). With a fishing line attached to the
sinker, paid out by a cheapo spinning reel, you can conquer any tree. My trees
were 90-100 feet tall, and I put the line over the top of them (for the Moxons)
with 35 psig. It's reasonably priced, and you won't believe how well it is
packed and shipped--in 4" diameter PVC drain pipe! Two weeks ago, I
replaced the feed point Balun of my 2 el M2 40m Yagi with a coax/toroid choke
Balun built into a short length of that shipping container, so talk about a
real value (see QST for May 2013, page 46 to get the general idea).
At the moment, I have only slight regrets that I didn't rise and shine early on
Sunday AM to work the remainder of the event, but I'm finding exhaustion to be a
cumulative thing rather than an instantaneous thing. We slept-in on Sunday and
then doused antennas and struck camp, arriving home at suppertime. We unpacked
only the essentials, had a light supper, and checked email and telephone
messages. What had we missed since our Wednesday departure? Only a 5.2
earthquake whose eipcenter was near Duncan, Arizona, about 80-90 miles
crowflight. No damage here, but some of the wall hangings weren't plumb. What
a time to be alive, hey?
I did a mini analysis of my log, because it seemed like I had worked a fair
percentage of "stay home" Field Day stations (Classes D, E, and F).
I did the same for my 2009 log:
Class 2014 2009 (Class 1B Battery both years)
A 244 443
B 69 59
C 3 5
D 91 102
E 66 85
F 26 36
Total 499 730 (dupes included I worked some RTTY and SSB in 2009)
Admitedly, both are small sample spaces, and I didn't weed out the dupes.
Class C ops are too small to draw conclusions but appear to be statistically
the same. Class B nearly doubled, from 8.1 to 13.8 percent (think about what
Moxons can do for you!). Class A QSOs have decreased from 61 to 49 percent,
while "stay home plus Class F" have increased from 30.5 to 36.7
percent. Is there a trend away from actual "field" operations to
"cozy shack" ops? Is this another indicator of our graying amateur
population (my hair is, ahem, white)? The big
question is, are we replacing ourselves? I worked a fair number of obvious
neophyte ops on Saturday--folks who had troubles copying my Run speeds, folks
who used mechanical keys and had beginners' "fists," and so forth.
These are the guys I like to work on CW, because properly Elmered and
encouraged, they may be our replacements. I always QRS for them and make as
many repeats as needed to make the QSO happen, ignoring the anxious callers who
cannot wait for a slow QSO to finish. I can just see those neophyte CW ops at a
club set up, very likely with an Elmer sitting close by, helping out. That's
where I was in the early 70's, working a Field Day with K5MAT and the Los
Alamos Radio Club.
So, many thanks to all for the QSOs, and special thanks to the new/young ops
who chose the CW key instead of the mic, swallowed the lumps in their throats,
and jumped into the world of rhythm and music of CW. I hope you were truly
pleased with your experiences and that you will continue your development as CW
ops. After all, ANYONE can talk into a mic, but only "special people"
do CW, the only digital mode that can be decoded by the computer between the
ears! Bravo Zulu to you and to your Elmers!
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