This weekend is the amateur radio communities’ field day. Are any of you, or your flotillas participating in this year’s event?

I just got in from my club's events (event call sign WY5I). It was my first time at a Field Day and I wasn't on the radios. I was just helping out and learning.

Everything is being done off battery power. Aside from the standard voice and CW modes, the club is running an AMSAT station from an HT and a PSK station - also on battery power.

The local Aux (flotillas and division) have never participated in Field Day.

Are you running digital in the pix or is the computer for logging? Were you with others or did you solo?

We wrapped up today. They were still putting the manual logs in the computer when I left but I know we had over 1,000 contacts of which 29 were digital, 1 was satellite, about 125 CW and the rest were all voice.

I wasn't there last night but those who were got a bonus. Two sea turtles came ashore after midnight and laid their eggs within 30' of the pavilion.

An omelete to go with the pulled pelican. Almost Nauga season isn't it??

A group from flotilla 4 got together.

Equipment

On the left you see a pellican case. This is my portable VHF kit. It contains a Kenwood D 700

We used an ICOM 706 with an inverted wire V Dipole (NVIS)

The computer is for logging contacts.

We leisurely set up at about 1400 on saturday. Before 1430 we were on the air making contacts.

We worked for about four hours leisurely working our way across the 40 meter band. We made 25 contacts.

When dinner time came we packed up, and called it a night.

Overall it was a lot of fun.

Overall it was a lot of fun.

The goals of Field Day are to get out in the field and test the emergency communications setups and have fun. It looks like you scored on both accounts.

BTW - if you get QST, in the June issue is a cover story "A Recruitment Success Story". It is listed in the table of contents as: "Recruiting New Hams: How A Florida Group hleped more than 100 First Responders and civilians earn their Amateur Radio license". That was written by the president of my amateur radio club.

He describes how the club did it on page 70. His advice could also apply to an Auxiliary flotilla.

quote:

1. having a good location for the class;
2. having regularly scheduled classes and exams;
3. forming a corps of people willing to teach;
4. advertising - get your Public Information Officer (PIO) working;
5. using your connections to emergency services persoonel - they will want to join in too.

All the above except for maybe point 5 are applicable to an Auxiliary flotilla's PE program.