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Did any of the hams on the board participate in Field Day yesterday? If you did, what was your station size and power source and what did you operate? Any good contacts or interesting gear?
Personally, I was working 40 meter phone with my local ham club. I was using my Yaesu FT747GX, an original Astatic d104 with UG8 base and (As far as I can tell) original element with a homebrew audio amplifier, and a 40 meter center fed full wave dipole I made out of two Slinkies. The rest of the station got circles run around us by our code guy like always but I got 15 contacts over 4 hours anyway- including Kansas and Canada. Our 20m phone operator got w1aw pretty early on as well on a buddy pole and Kenwood radio.
We were a 4A station in Kentucky, running under club call W4KVK.
Anyone got any interesting stories to share?
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I helped setup our main clubs Field Day and we had to deploy the new tower for the first time so there were “Opportunities” presented to say the least but all went OK in the end,it just took a lot longer than usual to get on the air!
We also used the Tipper Tower that I used for the MS Bike Ride last year and I got to see it in less than ideal placement on uneven terrain so we had to guy it out like crazy but again all was well in the end.
I will stick to my own adaptation of the Tipper though with it clamped solidly to my little trailer and without the need to guy it up.I went home early and finished putting together 2 Full Duplex X-Band Repeater controllers and tested them in preparation for events where we need them as our ancient one bit the dust at last during the last 2 events we used it for?
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Good Times despite not being there to get mosquito-ed to death!
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This one is my personal machine with Alinco Radios but the Club Machine uses ICOM Commercial Radios though they each seem to work out about the same in hard use.
I don’t have the Fans on there yet obviously!We built 2 just in case and the circuit is by KB3HF.
It is tough to find anything off the shelf to do Duplex Cross-Band for some reason?
EZDog said: ↑
I helped setup our main clubs Field Day and we had to deploy the new tower for the first time so there were “Opportunities” presented to say the least but all went OK in the end,it just took a lot longer than usual to get on the air!We also used the Tipper Tower that I used for the MS Bike Ride last year and I got to see it in less than ideal placement on uneven terrain so we had to guy it out like crazy but again all was well in the end.
I will stick to my own adaptation of the Tipper though with it clamped solidly to my little trailer and without the need to guy it up.I went home early and finished putting together 2 Full Duplex X-Band Repeater controllers and tested them in preparation for events where we need them as our ancient one bit the dust at last during the last 2 events we used it for?
[IMG]
Good Times despite not being there to get mosquito-ed to death!
[IMG]
[IMG]
This one is my personal machine with Alinco Radios but the Club Machine uses ICOM Commercial Radios though they each seem to work out about the same in hard use.
I don’t have the Fans on there yet obviously!We built 2 just in case and the circuit is by KB3HF.
It is tough to find anything off the shelf to do Duplex Cross-Band for some reason?
Click to expand…
Sounds (And looks) like a sweet setup. The local club just replaced their aging dual-Maxon commercial radio VHF repeater with a Fusion equipped Yaesu, but it isn’t crossband. That dual alinco setup looks like a nicely thought out system- hopefully it works right and doesn’t give you any issues. The icom commercial radios should make for a good system too, though I find that the heat dissipation on commercial radios is insufficient for ham use- I had a 25 watt Motorola gm300 in my truck for about a year and that heat sink would get hot enough to burn you pretty bad after half an hour at a 50% duty cycle. Hot enough that I worried about the finals on longer ragchews.
The tower is impressive for a field day setup. Our digital modes guy was on a g5rv strung out as a horizontal dipole with the feedpoint at the center supported by military surplus fiberglass poles. Last year he had it set up as an inverted V and it worked pretty well given the terrible band conditions.Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
thatotherguy said: ↑
Sounds (And looks) like a sweet setup. The local club just replaced their aging dual-Maxon commercial radio VHF repeater with a Fusion equipped Yaesu, but it isn’t crossband. That dual alinco setup looks like a nicely thought out system- hopefully it works right and doesn’t give you any issues. The icom commercial radios should make for a good system too, though I find that the heat dissipation on commercial radios is insufficient for ham use- I had a 25 watt Motorola gm300 in my truck for about a year and that heat sink would get hot enough to burn you pretty bad after half an hour at a 50% duty cycle. Hot enough that I worried about the finals on longer ragchews.
The tower is impressive for a field day setup. Our digital modes guy was on a g5rv strung out as a horizontal dipole with the feedpoint at the center supported by military surplus fiberglass poles. Last year he had it set up as an inverted V and it worked pretty well given the terrible band conditions.Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
We do events that require both further coverage over hilly terrain and more than one Net running during the entire event so these Repeaters are designed to alleviate the need for big,heavy and expensive VHF “Cans” to run multiple VHF Nets side by side or the need for everyone to have high power UHF Mobile rigs to be able to switch Net.So we setup one tower at Net Control with a high gain VHF Vertical antenna AND a UHF Beam aimed 25-30 miles away toward the other end of the needed coverage area.
At that other end we setup a second Tower with the same Antenna compliment.
We can then use a UHF radio at Net to hit the UHF in the Repeater at the other end and then the signal is repeated on VHF where people can easily hit it now with VHF Mobiles by simply changing Net Frequencies. There signal is then repeated from VHF back to UHF and back to Net Control.We test this all in advance of planned events if locations need to change but we have been doing this for many years now and as long as the Radios are working OK it all works like someone planned it or something!?
So we can almost double our range and capacity as needed with just a second Net Station setup at the middle of the other end.
Here is what my setup for the Far End looks like as of now,35′ of tip up tower attached at over 8′ to the trailer itself.
Quick to setup and easy to move as needed!
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We have had decent results from both Commercial and Consumer rigs as long as they are fan cooled enough.
The commercial radios do run hotter but are supposed to be designed to as well but I wonder sometimes too?
Those Fusion Repeaters are nice but have you looked inside one? There are what look like Yaesu FT-400 radios in there,nothing commercial about them at all,so I do wonder where the line is drawn these days too?EZDog said: ↑
Those Fusion Repeaters are nice but have you looked inside one? There are what look like Yaesu FT-400 radios in there,nothing commercial about them at all,so I do wonder where the line is drawn these days too?
That wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. The thing that surprised me most was the fact that when it started running Fusion it stepped down power output, evidently to manage heat buildup at the 100% duty cycle the digital mode requires. I figure it needs a better heat dissipation system instead of stepping down power, but I’m not a Yaesu engineer.
I’m not really a Yaesu guy anyway. I’ve had and heard of far too many problems with Yaesus to be coincidence.Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
thatotherguy said: ↑
That wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. The thing that surprised me most was the fact that when it started running Fusion it stepped down power output, evidently to manage heat buildup at the 100% duty cycle the digital mode requires. I figure it needs a better heat dissipation system instead of stepping down power, but I’m not a Yaesu engineer.
I’m not really a Yaesu guy anyway. I’ve had and heard of far too many problems with Yaesus to be coincidence.Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
I was pretty surprised when I took one apart that there seems to be little to prevent the machine from self-destructing in normal use?
The fan is minimal in there and the radios are sealed inside the metal box?
The Fusion repeaters that we have deployed here sound terrible to me too and there is not a lot of need yet for the Digital mode here either.
I was handed one to build this Machine at first but while they can be setup for a traditional in-band repeater with offset in about 5 minutes or a XBand repeater one way they can not be configured as I needed as a Duplex XBand straight up!
I would need 2 of them AND another Controller to make it work?
There are also plenty of consumer Dual Banders with 2 VFO’ that will XBand like this but they are not as stout as a Mono Band radio for the duty cycle needed for this use.For this project I would have eagerly used Yaesu,Icom or Kenwood Monoband radios but there are none to be found?
I have a Kenwood pair that I use at the Net Control end usually but the Alinco is the only model on the market with all of the connections needed to build the Repeater already on the radio on the outside in a DB9 connector ready to be taken advantage of!
I didn’t realize this at first but if the TNC is not installed to use the DB9 then all of the Audio,COS & PTT lines are present on the DB9 making the Alinco the no-brainer choice for this use.The Alinco is also much more simple to operate overall it seems and so far they have been rugged enough too.
I just received my ham technician license about two weeks ago and planned to listen in one what capabilities I have, but of course field day was the one Saturday I decided to hold clinic this year, and I missed out. I’m testing for general next month. For the last test I read the Gordon West book a day prior and managed to pass well. I assume the same for general. I may need a week for extra if I go that far. I’m not seeing any substantial reason to hold an extra ticket.
Given that field day is in summer, and I despise the outdoors in our forsaken, humid, hot, bug-infested Arkansas summers I’ll probably never take part directly.
I recently saw a quad band 10m, 6m, 2m, and 70cm radio I might get for my vehicle after I examine antenna options. It’s got to be something discreet, or it’s not happening.
ArkansasFan30 said: ↑
I just received my ham technician license about two weeks ago and planned to listen in one what capabilities I have, but of course field day was the one Saturday I decided to hold clinic this year, and I missed out. I’m testing for general next month. For the last test I read the Gordon West book a day prior and managed to pass well. I assume the same for general. I may need a week for extra if I go that far. I’m not seeing any substantial reason to hold an extra ticket.Given that field day is in summer, and I despise the outdoors in our forsaken, humid, hot, bug-infested Arkansas summers I’ll probably never take part directly.
I recently saw a quad band 10m, 6m, 2m, and 70cm radio I might get for my vehicle after I examine antenna options. It’s got to be something discreet, or it’s not happening.
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Congrats on the license!
I’m biased but I’d highly recommend sitting for the Extra when you go for General. It doesn’t cost anything extra and if you pass you get full spectrum privileges instead of the restricted spectrum privileges that General licensees get. I sat for and passed General and Extra on the same day, after studying the ARRL General book and the Gordon West Extra book.
I don’t regret doing it, even if I do still tend to hang out on my favorite machine on 2m.Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
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