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2004 Ford Amateur Radio League/Livonia Amateur Radio Club Field Day
On a beautiful, sunny weekend in Livonia, the FARL and the LARC joined forces to conduct Field Day exercises at the Livonia Fire Station on Plymouth Rd near Newburgh.
Below are the graphics on where we worked. There is also our club submission document! (Click here for a shortcut) I also have included our discussion on the 2004 Field Day from the Bolt Newsletter (Shortcut)
Our Club score was 2,532 points, as seen in the December, 2004 ARRL QST issue.
2004 Livonia Amateur Radio Club and Ford Amateur Radio League Field Day Livonia, MI Congratulations to all who participated in this year’s Field Day! We operated 2A this year, with one SSB station and one primarily CW station in operation. We completed more sideband contacts this year than last year (even though we had 2 SSB stations last year) and more CW contacts this year. We made the same number of Digital (RTTY) contact this year as last year. For the first time in recent memory, we enjoyed a combination of acceptable band conditions and very nice weather conditions. We had great success on 80 meters SSB this year, making contacts throughout the night. The CW station had its greatest success on the 40m band. Because we did some 40m SSB contacts on the CW station, we did not get as many contacts on this band as in prior years. Both stations had a difficult time on 20m for some reason, with many stations just not hearing our signal. We did make some contacts on 15m, and neither station made any contacts on 10m. No success with the satellites this year, but there are only a couple of “birds” workable this year. The greatest gift of our weekend was the weather. We did not have any rain or thunderstorms this year, and the temperatures were cool. We were able to operate all 24 hours this year, plus get everything taken down by 3pm on Sunday. Helping our quick teardown was a lot of help from our guests from the Franklin Park Radio Patrol from Detroit. They came upon the invitation of the LARC to see our Amateur radio operations. They appeared to enjoy themselves, stayed through a wonderful lunch, and offered to help us take everything down after we were done. What worked and what didn’t work this year: What worked: Running 2A instead of 3A. We kept the 2 stations better occupied with operators this year. Using the dipole and the vertical antenna. We managed to keep each station out of the other station well this year, and set up and tear down were great compared to setting up and taking down the beam. Food and drink: A special thanks to Sharon for her wonderful leadership on the food. Thanks to Bill WA8HEA for his food organizing and contributions. Also, breakfast worked this year, as Dave N8HKU started cooking with gas, bringing along a propane camping stove to make eggs and pancakes. The hot food was appreciated by the brave Bill and Bill crew who stayed the night on site in spite of the cool weather. Generator: We had a couple of quiet generators working this year. Except for running out of oil in the Honda (which shut itself down when this happened), all electrical power was very good. 80m SSB: Most of the SSB contacts were made on 80m, in spite of some trouble with the antenna. (See what didn’t work, below) Dave N8HKU and Steve N8TYS made a bunch of contacts in the early evening, with Bill WA8HEA doing a great job on the overnight shift, with Dave N8HKU coming back again after sunrise. Set up and Tear down: The simpler set up and tear down really made it easy. In fact, we were ready to go on Saturday by 11am. May be able to start a bit later next year and still be ready well before 2pm. Guests: Thank you to Kevin (Nocall), Steve (N8TYS) and the Franklin Park Radio Club volunteers who visited and participated in our event this year. We also had a couple of visitors from the Livonia Fire station, and they were impressed by our set up. What didn’t work: The trap dipole at the high end of the 80m band (3.9 MHz). It took 2 antenna tuners in series to obtain an acceptable SWR. A new dipole set up is probably due, as this antenna is almost 20 years old. The 20m band pass filter for the CW station. The one problem with the band pass filters is that they will be destroyed if power is run into them on the wrong band. The 20M bandpass filter started showing a very bad SWR, and the CW team removed it. We plan on taking it apart and seeing if it broke or got accidentally fried. Operators: Need more of us to participate and get behind the key and microphone! It is great fun to operate, and this kind of training is important in case we are ever called upon to handle real emergency operations. Please mark next year on your calendar (4th full weekend in June) to attend and participate! Thank you to both the Livonia Amateur Radio Club and the Ford Amateur Radio League for your sponsorship and support of this year’s Field Day. 73, Dave N8HKU
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