2015 Summer Fest / Field Day - General Comments

[DaveK]

Summer Fest / Field Day is a few month away, but it's never too early to start thinking about it. Post your general comments here.

We'll be posting planning information soon.

[cruiserlarry]

OAUSA Summerfest / Field Day has always been a great time...and I'm looking forward to this year's event. We will have camping, pot luck dinner, trail runs, amateur radio license testing, and a special focus on the yearly AARL Amateur Radio Field Day "contest" - a chance for everyone to get involved with HF communications simulating the communications needs that occur during emergency situations - including remote antenna deployment, field operating, and auxiliary power usage.

The Field Day "contest" takes place for a 24-hour continuous period, from 11:00am Sat 6/27 through 11am Sun 6/28. So, we need volunteer radio operators / operator assistants to help man the radios for shifts to cover the entire time, if possible.

We have licensed quite a few new hams at OAUSA, and I hope they all consider coming out to help us on the HF bands for the Field Day portion of the weekend. If you've never worked a Field Day before, or are new to operating the HF amateur radio bands, you are sure to have a good time - and probably learn a lot of useful information regarding remote operations, radio functions, and just develop a keener ear for hard to hear signals. If you are an experienced HF operator (and we have several at OAUSA as well), we can benefit from your expertise, experience, and mentor-ship.

If you are planning on attending, please give us a heads-up if you have any equipment related to the Field Day operations available to provide for our use: Pop-ups, generators, tables, chairs, HF radios, power supplies, tuners, antennas, headsets, laptops, power cords, coax cable, connectors, etc...

More specific information will be posted up in the coming weeks - but don't forget to mark your calendar now, so we can accommodate everyone who wants to attend.

[DennisDawg]

Where is it going to be held this year? Back when it was in SBNF, I always wanted to stop by but missed the chance.

[DaveK]

Where is it going to be held this year? Back when it was in SBNF, I always wanted to stop by but missed the chance.

It will be at the McGill campground in the northeastern part of Los Padres National Forest.

[DennisDawg]

Interesting. We’ll see. It is about 3 hours without traffic . . . for me. Not too bad . . . but like 6 hours on a Friday night!

Just curios, why did it stop being held on in SBNF?

[DaveK]

Mostly propagation and availability. We worked to keep the location within a 1-3 hour drive for most people in the SoCal area while at the same time finding a location that had the best elevation.

[DaveK]

The weekend was a success. We've opened up a separate location for event comments, reports, pictures, and any suggestions you want to make. See: viewtopic.php?f=197&t=3885 .