Field Day
updated 6/12/2007
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Field Day
is fun....... A picture tells a
thousand
words...... never truer than this picture!
 Washington County ARES/RACES
Field Day - June 23-24, 2007
City of WC7EOC Event Callsign What: ARRL Field Day is the largest operating event of the year. It is intended to promote emergency preparedness, expose the public and elected officials to amateur radio and sharpen operating skills. Who: WashCo ARES members, Tigard Emergency Management, OCEM-related Elected Officials, Tigard Elected Officials, Washington County Emergency Managers and the Public. When: Saturday & Sunday, June 23th -24th Setup: 6AM to about 10AM Saturday On-the-Air: 10AM Saturday to 10AM Sunday Take Down: 10 AM on Sunday Where:
City of Meals: The
following will be provided courtesy of Tigard EM, Mike Leuk., BBQ and
drinks.
Steve Sanders Appraisal will provide burgers, hotdogs and condiments.
No
alcohol on site, please! Potluck for the rest of the food.
What to Bring: Bring their own lawn chair, snacks, drink items and ARES ID & vests. Public Relations: A press release will be sent to the media prior to the FD. A public Information Booth will also be set up and needs to be “manned” by ARES volunteers. See Steve Sanders, KE7JSS our PIO. Operating:
We
will be operating as WC7EOC, 2F –
UHF/VHF: The Intel Comm Van will be on-site Saturday (only) to provide all of the UHF/VHF Field Day communications. See Ed, KC7ZBI about operating from the van and van tours. Operating Assistants: Visiting youth, inexperienced hams and members of the public will need coaching in FD exchanges and HF operating. Special
Notes:
Team Assignments:
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 2 HF radio-computer stations. Each radio must have contesting
software installed; preferably a radio-computer
(CI-V) interface and network connection. 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.
4. Antennas:
We use a dipole on
80M and on 40M. The biggest challenge is
figuring out how to get the antennas UP in the air. We have used
boom-trucks with great success in the past. 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
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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 |
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