[Fourlanders] Field Day K4BFT

[Paul Yeager]

Hi guys!

I had a great field day on 20M!  The W4SKI Ski Pole Quad (Version 2) did not look like it was going to fall down (as the less robust Version 1 did last year), and played great!  The most expensive component is the center section of the boom, borrowed from a triband yagi.  The outer boom sections are salvaged aluminum tubing, the hubs are made from plywood and a short section of 4 x 4 wood post, the spreaders are made from discarded ski pole shafts and 1/4" fiberglass rod from Tractor Supply joined with 4" pieces of 1/2 inch ID aluminum tubing, and the elements are made from 17 gauge aluminum fence wire that I throw away after the antenna is dismantled.  One of the guys took it home to use in his garden.

The dimensions are from the ARRL Antenna Book article on quads, and the antenna is fed with a 1/4 wave matching section of RG-6, pretty much as described in the Antenna Book article.

If you scroll through the photos on the article below, you'll find a photo of the quad.

http://themountaineer.villagesoup.com/p/dialed-in/1022576


It was good for 705 SSB and 25 PSK contacts with a Yaesu FT-840.  Probably could have had more with more operators.  I got 59+20 reports from Europe on Friday night, and got two calls from Germany in the first hour of Field Day.  I worked 87 stations in the first 57 minutes!  What fun it was to be a "big gun"!

For next year, I'm scheming a 40m Moxon, probably also using some discarded ski pole shafts.

73 de W4SKI
 
Paul Yeager
828 400 9442 (cell)


________________________________
 From: "whensley11 at comcast.net" <whensley11 at comcast.net>
To: Fourlanders <fourlanders at contesting.com> 
Sent: Sunday, June 30, 2013 6:04 PM
Subject: [Fourlanders] Field Day K4BFT
 

Hi, everybody. 

This time around I stayed in Huntsville and gave it a go with the 20m SSB station at K4BFT. I'll write more about how that went in a few. 

Here's a video clip of this year's operation. The first 3 minutes you can catch bits and pieces of their operation. The last 2 minutes are a bit of a "spoof" with the video guy having some fun with editing. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7rW0Ta1UmM&feature=youtu.be 

They erect Rohn towers for their antennas - for their quads and their dipoles. Each tower is "pre-set", ready to go. Each tower has a welded base plate that is first driven into the ground. Each tower has a pre-measured set of guy wires that are attached. The one crank-up tower is used as a "gin pole" to set each tower so it is moved from place to place to set up the towers. Each tower is lifted and set on its base plate, guy wires stretched out, and the "anchors" driven. It's a pretty coordinated effort much like we do for setting up W4NH on the mountain. 

Their "plus" is having members who have Arsenal access. There they reserve and rent air conditioned trailers for the weekend for the different stations. The advantage of a military base. They use portable generators owned by the local EMA. 

They operate 4A. They have a GOTA station and a satellite station. Most of the stations use N1MM software. There is no network. 

Now for the 80/20m SSB station. When I arrived at the site there was a tower in the air, AND... NO ANTENNAS. No 20m quad. No 80m dipole. And the rig... was an IC-7000. None of this bode well. They eventually put a vertical on the air about an hour into the contest. That did NOT "play". So they tried a dipole. By this time I had moved over to the 15/40m SSB station. They had a dismal showing on 20m and 80m phone. 

Any questions, drop me a line. 

73, Kim - WG8S 

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