WD9EWK - ARRL Field Day 2004
Updated 26 January 2005
I operated from the Fort Tuthill Park, south of downtown Flagstaff, Arizona, in grid DM45dd. I was in the same location I operated from in 2003, which had a pair of picnic tables this time. More space to set up and operate from.
After briefly listening to each of the bands between 80m and 10m, I decided to start working on the 20m band. My first contact went into the log at 1308 (2008 UTC), with VE7NOR in British Columbia on 14.160 MHz. Ironically, this is the first contact I have made using this portion of the 20m band reserved for Extra class licensees in the USA - and I have had my Extra license for the past 6 months! I tuned up and down the SSB end of the band, making 12 more contacts in the next 50 minutes with 6 other stations in British Columbia and 6 more stations in 5 western USA states. I was getting back into the groove of working Field Day, and decided it was time to move up to the 15m band and see what I could find there.
Starting at 21.205 MHz, I started tuning up and down the band making more contacts. Conditions were interesting - some contacts with neighboring states, and some further away. For the first time in my Field Day efforts, I contacted a station in Hawaii - KH6BB, located on the battleship USS Missouri at Pearl Harbor, near Honolulu in Hawaii. This is a good sign! For this part of my afternoon, I made 9 contacts in just over 30 minutes with stations in 7 different states.
Last year, I had good luck making contacts with stations on the 40m band, and wanted to give it a try this time. At 1438 (2138 UTC), down I went. My first contact was with another Arizona station, K7TR in Chino Valley, southwest of Flagstaff. After this contact, I had to take a break - a thunderstorm was blowing over, leaving a little bit of rain in the dry forest and with the risk of lightning I did not want to leave my radio connected to an antenna. When the storm blew over, 10 minutes or so later, I proceeded to make 13 more contacts in the next 40 minutes on the 40m band - 12 of them in California (mostly southern California, but one near Sacramento) and another Arizona station - W7EI (a Cottonwood AZ radio club, but I do not know where that group was operating from).
Now it is approaching 1530 (2230 UTC), and I start to bounce around the various bands more. There is a rule that says I must remain on a band for at least 15 minutes before changing bands, so I start doing that. Four more contacts back up on the 15m band, then 4 on the 10m band, 4 on the 20m band, and then 6 down on the 40m band. Propagation is pretty good, but there were few stations up on the 10m band to stay there too long. The 15m and 20m bands were holding up well, and I was able to reach more stations in northern California on the 40m band as the afternoon went on.
After over 90 minutes of doing all this, it is just past 1700 (0000 UTC Sunday), and I have logged 54 contacts. I have already exceeded my total of 51 contacts from Field Day 2003, at at this moment had a total of 570 points (total includes 300 bonus points I could accumulate by making just one contact from this location for Field Day), but would need to make more contacts and collect more bonus points to exceed my high score of 680 from 2002.
At this point, I knew that the special ARRL Field Day message, transmitted from the ARRL's W1AW station in Newington CT, would be on the air in about an hour (1800 local, or 0100 UTC Sunday). This would be another 100 points toward my score, and would certainly push me beyond that 680 total points I had for Field Day in 2002, along with more contacts in the logbook. In this hour, until the bulletin transmission, I decided to go up to the 15m band again. I was now hearing more stations from the eastern USA. Last year, I had no contacts with any states east of Texas. This would not be an issue this year, as I was able to make 13 more contacts with stations as far east as Florida, New Jersey, and Puerto Rico - another first for me during Field Day.
I stopped making contacts a few minutes before 1800, to get my laptop and TNC ready for the W1AW bulletin. The "teleprinter" bulletins, as ARRL refers to them, are transmitted in 3 different digital modes - RTTY, AMTOR, and ASCII. My station is able to receive them all, but since I did not bring the proper cable to transmit with the mode I was not able to make any contacts with these modes. At 1800, I could copy the signals on 14.095 MHz and 21.095 MHz, but the signals on 14.095 MHz were slightly stronger. I am able to copy the bulletin in RTTY clearly, in AMTOR with some problems, and the ASCII transmission was mostly garbled. When the bulletin transmissions were done, I shut down the laptop and TNC and return to making contacts until sunset. With this message, adding 100 points to my score, I am at 67 contacts, and 735 points (more than my 2002 total).
In the final hour and 20 minutes, I made 14 more contacts - 2 on the 40m band, 2 on the 10m band, and 10 on the 15m band. My final Field Day contact was logged at 1948 (0248 UTC Sunday), with W4LEE in Alabama, as I was running out of daylight. I ended up having to set up some fluorescent lights with my battery packs, to light up my area as I cleaned up and ended my Field Day effort for 2004.
With better propagation, I was able to reach stations as far away as Hawaii, British Columbia, New Hampshire, and Puerto Rico this year. I have yet to work a station that is outside the USA and Canada since Field Day was opened up to stations throughout the Americas, but there were some out there.
The IC-703 is a good radio for this sort of operation. I could have used it at its maximum 10-watt power level, and possibly had a few more contacts or made some of my contacts with fewer repeats, but at 5 watts I stayed in the station classification I wanted and wasn't putting a lot of stress on the radio. After seeing how well this radio can work with a large dipole and twin-lead fed into a 4:1 balun, I now keep one of those baluns with the IC-703 for future trips.
Would I attempt to operate in another classification, if I had other operators willing to work with me? Sure! I have a pair of radios that can be operated from battery power for a long time - my IC-703, and a Yaesu FT-817ND. The IC-703 has a built-in tuner, the FT-817ND could use an external tuner for wire antennas, or I have a pair of Buddipole portable dipoles that could be erected. I should try to make contacts on the 6m band, since both of these radios work on that band, and if there is propagation 5 watts could be adequate.
73!