Friends, Piglets, lend me your ears, the time has come to prepare for the big one! Thats right Field Day is just around the corner and its time to make our mark with the Piglets first field day outing!
What: ARRL Field Day Info
When: June 24th-25th
- Operating hours 1800 UTC (1400 EDT) Saturday and ending at 2059 UTC (1659 EDT) Sunday
- Setup will begin by 10AM after a 8AM breakfast at The Original Pancake House Info
Where: Cool Creek Park, Westfield Indiana Info
Schedule
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Saturday
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8AM: Meet for breakfast at The Original Pancake House -
9AM: Begin work on setup of the 4 operating stations plus Field Day Central and info booth -
2PM: Operating period begins -
4:30PM: Early Dinner (Snacks will be out during the day to keep everyone full) -
10PM: Overnight period begins (will need confirmed operators to monitor equipment)
Sunday
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3AM: Stop Operating and take overnight break (overnight period ends) -
6AM: Resume Operating -
8AM: Breakfast -
5PM: conclude operating and begin cleanup
What you can do to be a part of it:
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Bring Equipment, there is a spreadsheet to view what we need as a club to make the event work. Let Derek KD9MEQ know what you can bring or if you have ideas on items missing from the list
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Sign up for roles, on the same spreadsheet there is a tab showing all the setup and teardown roles that are needed to make the event happen
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Food planning, in the spreadsheet there are several slots for different meals that need food prepared. Hams don’t work on empty stomachs
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Sign up for Bonus point jobs, in the spreadsheet there is a list of bonus point objectives for field day that need to be completed to earn the club points
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Operate! after all the hard work setting up, get on the air and make some QSOs!
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Invite GOTA (Get On The Air) operators, this can be new hams, visitors, or generally inactive hams that want to operate at field day (5x points for GOTA QSOs!)
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Night Owl? We need people to stay up and keep an eye on the equipment overnight. its a great time to make some rare QSOs and see how the bands propagate in the late hours.
Here is a photo of what I have mocked up for the physical setup. The yellow circle is the 1000ft circle we must stay inside of per the rules. The red lines are the antennas or designated antenna space claim. Satellite is in blue to indicate its not HF. We will be grouping a number of tents around the Field Day Central shelter to turn that into the main hub of the event. On the concrete leading to the parking lot we can setup an info booth advertising the event and the club. The SSB and CW stations will be in separate tents to minimize rf interference and to allow for the social center to not disturb operators.
Depending on group feel we may shut down one of the SSB stations and only operate digital (on the buddi hex or the GOTA antenna if we want 40m digital) and one SSB station (prob shutdown SSB/CW 2 since its more off by itself) at night. We would place the radios and other expensive parts at field day central so they are supervised overnight.
Please feel free to invite anyone and everyone to come and checkout the field day operation. A big part of this event is to share the hobby with the community and try to interest possible new members to the club.
I will update this post as more details come together.
Hope to see you there!!
Derek KD9MEQ
EDIT
Piglet Simplex is 147.475 with 77Hz PL Tone
EDIT 6/5
Food schedule updated to reflect not having a formal lunch Saturday and instead having an early dinner with snacks throughout the day
EDIT 6/8
Breakfast time updated from 7AM to 8AM
EDIT 6/20
Updated schedule to reflect taking a 3 hour operating break between 3AM-6AM
The GOTA station will use W9CZK as its callsign
- Going to Breakfast Saturday
- Not Going to Breakfast Saturday
0 voters
EDIT 6/21
