Outdoor Adventure USA

FIELD DAY 2017

The event is over and it's time for all those who participated to let us know how it went. Whether you attended ours or not, here is the place to post up about your Field Day.

Outdoor Adventure had one of our best events. The group campsite was full and there were activities for all to enjoy, including a full blown Field Day competition, trail runs, great weather (for almost the entire event), great food and drink, a beautiful mountain camping spot, and of course, the camaraderie of good friends. The pictures tell the story, but we will get to the details during the net. Thanks to all who attended and helped make this a terrific weekend!!!

For anyone who attended another Field Day, here is your opportunity to tell your stories and post pictures!!!

We operated a 4A station, meaning that we worked 4 bands and all stations utilize non grid power, in an area which is not a regular station location. At 7500 feet elevation, night time weather got a little chilly. The days were comfortable (high 70s/low 80s.) During a small portion of Saturday we had a couple of thunderstorms roll through, and the temps dropped even further. Here are a few pictures of the "shack" and the rain.

THE SHACK



RAIN AND THUNDERSTORMS

Trail Ride

On Saturday, we had a short trail ride to the top of Frasier Mountain. We decided that it rated a 3.5 out of 10 difficulty. So all in all a very pleasant ride through the trees with a bit of 4WD challenge. It was a short ride so we could get back for wine tasting and to prepare our Dutch oven dishes.

On the way back up to the camp site we drove through a hard rain storm which we were happy to see had not reached the camp site before we could water proof the camp.

I only took one picture - of the old watch tower at the peak. I am sure others will be able to post more.
Dutch Oven

Again this year we had too much food in the Dutch ovens and not enough eaters. Someone started on the quad chocolate cake before the meal started.

Field Day was a great trip! The weather was nice and the rain (yes, rain), provided a brief respite from the afternoon heat. There was lots of wine, appetizers, wine, food, wine, more food, radio, and offroading.

Offroading to Frazier Peak

Field Day was a great trip! The weather was nice and the rain (yes, rain), provided a brief respite from the afternoon heat. There was lots of wine, appetizers, wine, food, wine, more food, radio, and offroading.

The food was amazing.

Here are some pictures from our trail run.

Views from the top of the mountain. Some of the trees along the trail Abandon Fire Lookout & Tower Abandon Lookout Saturday a rain shower blew through. Quite a treat.

Here are a couple of pictures of my camp and makeshift satellite tracking antenna.
This is a picture of my camp for the weekend. The weekend was full of experimentation with trying amateur satellite operations for the first time, using an astronomy telescope mount to position the antenna along with astronomy software running on an iPad, and using my old telescope mount to track the sun with 2 30 watt solar panels I had picked up on sale from Goal Zero at the Overland Expo in May. Surprisingly, everything worked better than expected considering I hadn't tried any of out before Field Day weekend.

I was using an iOptron AZ Mount Pro goto mount to hold the antenna and an iPad program called Sky Safari 5 Plus to point the antenna. It's primarily an astronomy program but it also has a database with 1460 earth orbiting satellites. The mount won't actually track satellites but you can use a technique known as leap frogging. You can select a satellite and press goto on the screen to slew the antenna to the spot where the satellite was when you issued the goto command. The mount will stop. If you keep pressing the goto button the mount will do a reasonable job of tracking the satellite but will always lag slightly behind. I didn't find this to be too much of a problem unless I was working with the radio and would forget to hit the goto button. After a few seconds the signal would start to fade and I'd have to hit the goto button again to bring it back in.

The antenna is an Arrow 146/437-10. This is a cross polarized dual band antenna intended for hand held FM LEO satellite use. A company called Portable Rotation makes an adapter arm for this antenna to be used with their AZ EL rotator. I used their arm and attached a standard telescope Vixen style dove tail mount. This made it a snap to attach the antenna to the telescope rotator.

The antenna is the model without the built-in duplexer as I was using separate radios for 2m and 440.

Here is a close up of the radios I was using. These are single band all mode radios. When they were new 30 years ago they were one of the goto radio pairs for satellite work. It was easy to see that it would take 2 people to effectively operate satellites with these old radios. One person would have to tune the radios to compensate for the doppler shift while another person would make the contacts. The amount of doppler shift was surprising to see for the first time. These radios have an RIT knob which allows the frequency to be adjusted in 10Hz steps. Listening to a CW beacon on one satellite required constant adjustment to keep the CW at the same tone. A modern computer controlled radio with satellite mode would be much easier to operate since the computer can work the radio and adjust for the doppler shift while you make contacts.

I did use a PC laptop with satellite pass prediction software along with the iPad to drive the mount. The program I used was GPredict. This is a free program available from here http://gpredict.oz9aec.net or here https://sourceforge.net/projects/gpredict/

I had a fantastic time again this year and also had a much better idea of what to expect. The weather was fantastic! So what if we had to disconnect for a bit due to the thunderstorm.

I was able to make some great contacts and missed a few as well. We worked very well as a team and had a great time doing it. I counted 10 antennas for 4 radios this year and we have discussed plans to grow the antenna farm next year. I know the antennas will be much higher.

The appetizers and meals were excellent and yes, much more food than we could eat.

For anyone who enjoys the outdoors, loves to eat, talk, laugh, or wants to learn more about operating their radios, this is the Field Day to attend.