[Fourlanders] Field Day K4BFT

[whensley11 at comcast.net]

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