fd-2006

Washington County ARES/RACES
Field Day
updated 3/29/2007

Pictures - Past and Present
Assignments	Comments & Ideas
ARRL FD rules and forms

Field Day is fun....... A picture tells a thousand words...... never truer than this picture!

1. Location is very important as you get a very different experience operating from inside a tent than you do inside an EOC. If you want a "True" FD experience, an outdoor venue is best but then security Friday and Saturday nights for all that gear can be a real problem. That favors a private land setting with no public access. No public access, however, means little PR. So if you are going to be outside, in a public park you need to think about having people on-site 24/7 with trailers or motorhomes. Of course, you want to avoid valleys in favor of hilltop locations. We start looking for an operating location soon after the start of the new year. These considerations shape the experience a great deal. We have used Camp Rilea on the coast, private land near Ridgefield, a church in NE Portland, TVFR and Bald Peak in the past. So you gotta get consensus on what is important to the group. Maybe for WASHCO ARES, PR is the key.

2. Operating Positions: Due to band conditions, you are limited to 75, 40 and 20M pretty much. During the daylight hours and early evening, 20 and 40M are open. Later at night, only 80 and 40M. So at best, you get most of the action on only 2 of the 3 bands at any one time. 20M is always the "money-maker". So I suggest you think about 3 radios. A 4th, "non-converntional mode" station on 20M using SSTV is fun for demonstration-point purposes for a brief time but you must shut down the 20M SSB station during that period. We have not been able to use 20M SSB and 20M PSK31 simultaneously due to interstation interference. You can also have one station doing satellite work. Each radio is only on one band and should not be moved off of that assigned band to avoid blowing out another radio's front-end.If many people want to participate, you must have assigned shifts and band operating positions probably chosen by drawing as some options will have much action and others very little. Some of these shifts are late-night assignments (not too popular)

3. Radio/PC Equipment: You need 3 HF radio-computer stations. Each radio must have contesting software (we use Writelog) installed; preferably a radio-computer (CI-V) interface and network connection. All 3 radio/PCs should be networked. Hopefully, all 3 PC would have XP operating systems. Contesting software is required to log the contacts while avoiding dups. We use a ground-bus to ground everything and bandpass filters to minimize RFI between stations. It is best to get the PCs together a week before the FD weekend to work out the networking bugs. You really need to have a network-savy person around in case the network fails. If that happens, it is BAD news! You also need a reliable generator on-site in most cases.

4. Antennas: We use a 20M yagi (Force 12 C3SS or a Mosley TA-33) on 20M; a diple on 80M and a vertical on 40M. We also have a Force 12 Vertical Dipole on 20M that is used for SSTV demo purposes. The biggest challenge is figuring out how to get the 20M yagi UP in the air. We have used boom-trucks with great success in the past. Do not have a portable tower, however. Used the fire training tower at TVFR this year which was great. You need LOTS of coax!

5. Setup-Take Down: This year it took up 5-6 hours to set everything up Friday evening and 2 hours to tear it all down. We like to get all set up on Friday to be sure we are ready for the contest start at 11AM Saturday AM.

6. Points: We have tried to get maximum points for emergency power, getting young people on the air, using an EOC, having a visitor logs, distributing literature etc. These bonus points always far exceed the number of QSO points we make. IF you want to be serious about scoring, you MUST have agressive, experienced operators that push-push-push to make contacts!

7. PR: If you are in a very publc setting, you need to have a few people that are available to greet the public and anwer questions, hand out literature and tell people about upcoming classes. A table for this purpose is really needed. Some joint effort with CERT seems like a good idea.

8. Food: Always important! Pot - lucks and BBQs are great but someone has to be in charge of organizing everything.

Those are some of the highlights. FD can be a lot of work but it is also pretty fun. You might think about having some training opportunities (say satellite communications) going on during FD as well.

Hope all of this helps. Here are a couple of photos as well from TVFR.

73 John KX7YT

FD 2006 Documentation

Here are several documents from FD2006 that can be slightly modified for FD2007.

FD Location: A big task. May require ARES/OCEM leadership to get a secure, accessible location.

You will need volunteers for:

1. Field Day Head Honcho: Coordinates with FD location authority; first/last person on site to coordinate setup/teardown; coordinate FD equipment used.
2. Friday Setup Crew: Need 7-8 people. Comm Tent from Sheriff's Office setup/teardown.
3. Sunday Takedown Crew: Need 6-7 people
4. Public Info Officer: Public Info booth and display setup; press releases; dignitary greeting and photographer
5. Food Coordinator: Saturday lunch and dinner: Sunday donuts. Plenty of water.
6. Youth Involvement and CERT Coordinator (I assume here that CERT people should be invited to participate)
7. Special Comm Assignments: People to (a) send packet message to Oregon SM; Someone to originate NTS formatted message from FD site; person assigned specifically to copy ARRL FD bulletin on RTTY or PSK31.
8. Special Modes Demonstrations: Persons assigned to demonstrate D-STAR, SSTV; packet, APRS to the public/CERT.
9. Field Day Mentors: One or two people that are assigned to work with CERT/public/ARES folks that have never done FD before and need a coach.
9. Intel Comm Van Use for UHF/VHF

FD Decisions:

1. How many operating stations and on what HF bands?
2. Should we have a GOTA (get on the air) position?
3. Should there be dedicated CW or digital positions?
4. How to deal with interstation interference? (Note: You WILL have individuals bring their own rigs and what to operate from the FD site!)
5. Logging, computers and networks: What software, PC and Networking is needed? How are the PCs integrated to the radios?
6. Radios, coax, antennas, ground systems, power systems, outlet strips, power supplies, etc. Who brings what?

Hope this is helpful.

73 John C. KX7YT
2006 FD Coordinator

Name/Call	Band/Mode	Providing/Sharing Equipment	Put up/Take Down	Shift(s)