[TenTec] Just a 'foot-in-mouth' observation

[Stuart Rohre]

Bob, I am sorry you had a less satisfactory FD the last time you did it.

Each FD, I learn something that improves my operating skills or 
something is brought back in focus to be careful about in emergency 
deployments to unfamiliar locations or with different equipment and 
antennas.

We have facilitators for each station and someone on site at all hours 
to solve problems.  We use club station equipment that is all one model 
series so that each station has a similar look and feel, or we have the 
station captain train his station's operators on any new to them radios. 
  Thus, the club members eventually get exposed to radios different from 
their home stations.  We have had FLEX Software defined radios, Atlas, 
Kenwood, Yaesu,
Icom, and of course Ten Tec of several models.

We had never tried longer coax feeders, relying on ladder line for our 
distant antennas for about 12 years.  This year, I had some new double 
shielded 1/2 inch coax given to the club, and we tried it out, and it 
worked fine with good contacts at 100 watts.  Tuners were used with 90 
and 270 foot lengths to get antennas well separated.  This facilitated 
having less interaction even with operating positions side by side in 
one room.

Today, few if any disaster operation stations and EOCs would be located 
outdoors, even at a disaster scene.  There would be a trailer, or bus, 
or an EOC at a nearby intact building.  That is the kind of FD we tried 
this year, retiring our tents, in the plus 100 degree drought heat; and 
we went indoors but supplied all 5 stations with emergency power through 
gaskets we developed for patio doors in the operating center we chose. 
These gaskets were made of pipe insulation in six foot lengths and then 
with a seven inch extension where the coaxes and power cord came in thru 
the factory slit plus one we cut on scene.  This kept bugs out and 
cooling in.

We had a variety of tuners this year, and gained the experience of 
extending Icom tuner remote cables to twice the factory suggested length 
and proving that could work, (150 feet).  We use a remote tuner located 
at the base of one all band doublet, on an inflatable pylon mast that 
carries both an inverted Vee and VHF antenna.  Most hams have never 
seen, much less used, an inflatable mast. It has to have an air pump 
running to retain inflation periodically over the 24 hours.  But, you 
can't beat the ease of putting it up! Connect pump, power, and stand 
back.  You have the antenna 40 or more feet up in no time at all.

Our emergency power was the cutting edge; a trailer equipped with a 
Solar panels tilted array, capable of supplying all 5 stations, by 
charging batteries which then supplied AC inverters to give 120 VAC for 
the 24 hour FD period.
The Solar Trailer was a project of our local city utility and dates back 
about 5 years of Field Day use for us.  We have learned a lot about 
Solar power systems, and how to get the most for the available Solar 
real estate on the trailer.  Did you know you need to wash your solar 
panels after driving the trailer to the Field Day site?  That maximizes 
solar charging.

We had some problems, which were of the RF feedback type.  With some 
rigs, you need to be careful to not put an external tuner with aluminum 
case side by side or atop the rig.

We learned to have a CW station on the same band with a phone station, 
you share the band cooperatively.

We learned to back up laptop batteries by using them on our solar 
powered AC.  And to insure against any glitches, caused by AC 
interruption, we used a UPS where needed.  We log the whole FD with a 
separate central server on a HSMM MESH (tm) Network, with each node 
backed up by a Belkin 12 volt power for the MESH node, dual diversity 
antennas, and logging laptops with RF tie into the MESH rather than Wi 
Fi networking, which can crash due to file transfers to the server.

Our club HSMM MESH special interest group became proficient with serving 
a network of RF linked stations by networking the last 10 years of Field 
Days and converting us to MESH Networking in the last few years.  We 
have learned how to have reliable 2.4 GHZ links even without direct line 
of sight, using MESH relays, tripod mounted gain antennas, or BBQ grill 
dish antennas for point to point.

MESH is the future of em Comms, with simultaneous video, file transfers, 
and VOIP phone service among separated command posts.

All in all our ARES bag of tricks grows larger with knowledge and comms 
options each year we do a multiple station Field Day.

73,
Stuart Rohre
K5KVH