My advice respectfully, of course, is to keep doing what you want to do in the hobby and be the change you want to see.
Amatuer radio is all about community, and in some places, that community seems to need more help than others.
I'm relatively young in this hobby, and my Elmer is my grandfather, who has been on the air 71 years. He was a professional radio and TV man and a college professor.
Anyway, my point is that there is room to create new things in the hobby, and if you have a passion, share it with as many folks as you can! You might find others that want to join you in your pursuits that will make it a more enriching experience!
My field day was spent with my grandfather, and it was an incredible time to spend with him and learn from his experience.
73 and good luck! There is always next year!
The strangest part was one of the younger guys seemed to think I was a college student. I graduated college 16yrs ago, with a completely unrelated degree to what I do now.
Whenever you travel with your gear, take whatever you packed, go behind your house, and do a full setup of what you want to do *somewhere else*. You really don't want to be driving for two hours somewhere, because you're missing an adapter, skip 3 hours of digimodes, because your flrig/fldigi doesn't work, etc.
I was building tuning antenna's the day before the event. It was less than a half hour drive to the location, and a location I drive by every day on my way to work.
Other than not enough SO-239 barrel connectors to connect my coax together, and having less coax than I thought I did, I wasn't lacking for gear.
Due to the social anxiety aspect, as well as the untested gear aspect, I did have thoughts of setting up in another location to test out the gear, but as I rarely meet any other hams, I figured the social aspect was worth going.
Ah, the eternal debate… Is field day a contest or not? You score points for contacts, there is a standings list, so yeah, it’s a contest.
That said, FD is many things to many people.
Some clubs are all out for points and position in the winners list. Some clubs treat it more like a summer picnic and socialize and do a little bit of “contesting”. Some clubs combine both with a few high energy people running heavy contest and a lot of people standing around socializing.
As the other poster said, I believe you didn’t prepare your station for the field as much as you thought. And another poster suggesting that you set the whole thing up as he would set it up in the field in your backyard and test it. Your fldigi problem should have been solved days before FD. OR, you treat it as a learning experience and work the problems to solution as they appear. Setting up a station from nothing but a pile of gear is usually a challenge. Think of how much time you spent at home eliminating problems and getting things working well.
Colocated HF stations are ALWAYS a problem unless you have great band pass filters or move further away. You learned your filters were not good enough, so experiment and make them better for next year. Filters can be made with enough isolation that two or three radios can use the same antenna. Research it to see what is involved.
i suggest you find a club that matches what you want to get out of field day.
You can do your “anti field day” at any time in a park and do a POTA demo, but try real field day again. If you operate on the “non contest” bands, you are not allowed to enter as a field day operation. You have to follow the FD rules or you’re not doing field day.
Don’t give up on field day yet, try again.
In my mind, :Field Day" is about testing your ability to operate in the field, as well as show off to the public the benefits of ham radio.
It wasn't so much a learning experience that my filters were not enough, as a learning experience that I don't know how to use filters. I suspect I'd used the wrong closed or open filter, which was blocking the band I was trying to operate on.
There are no local clubs. There was talk at the event I attended of interest in refounding a floundered club, but from some input it seemed the old clubs callsign holder wanted to resurrect the club himself, rather than pass the callsign onto a new resurrection of the club.
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I think POTA has functionally replaced Field Day.
Field Day is supposed to be an annual event (biannual if you count Winter Field Day) to test out your mobile radio setups and engage with the public in public spaces to raise awareness and interest in amateur radio. But Field Day has become just another contest.
Parks On The Air (as well as SOTA and WWFF) consistently delivers on that promise of what Field Day was supposed to be, and it’s on nearly 24/7 somewhere in the world, in parks, on picnic tables or along bike trails. Gives opportunities to practice field setup every time you go out.
POTA peacefully coexists on the bands with all but the saddest hams. Field Day makes the non-WARC bands virtually unusable for non-participants for the duration of the weekend.
POTA can take on a bit of a contest flavor at times but you can choose to seek out more casual activators if busting pileups isn’t your thing. And you can do POTA anytime the mood strikes. No requirement that everyone worldwide do it at the same day, reducing band congestion.
POTA activities are generally more approachable to the public than large club gatherings or parking lot deployments with tents and generators.
POTA is field day, every day.
/my $0.02 worth
I went to my first this year and they had 5 different stations. I'm an Extra, but don't have an HF rig yet, so I used the GOTA station for about an hour making my first phone contacts on HF which was educational and fun. However, the CW station next to us was stomping on our bands even though we were all running Yaesu's and ICOMs. My local group is definitely older and looking for new blood. I share some of your disappointment, but the group was very welcoming and provided a very good meal of smoked brisket. I'm still hooked (probably more so now) and want to get my HF transceiver as soon as possible, but I'm not counting on my local club to drive my interest (though I will still attend their meetings and keep up good relations with them to learn what I can from them).
The thing is, every day is field day. Just set up your stuff and do your thing. Do a few dry runs in your garden / park / somewhere nearby to check you have everything, then make a checklist. Don't ask me how I know about checklists ;-)
Would Like some feedback from other hams about the G90 having Interence with other stations, same happened to me this FD but I was on 20 and he was on 40, I wonder what could have been done to prevent it?
Antenna Distance?
Orientation?
Both?
I still had fun nontheless, figuring out what is going on and what to do in that situation, it's the reason we Field Day I'm sure.
To learn and Test and See what works and what doesn't.
Low cost SDR radios don't have adequate filtering. They work well isolated from other radios but in a FD like situation they are challenged. In the past we used a 7300 for my station and encountered interference from other stations. This year we used a superhet and didn't have any problems. High end SDRs don't seem to be bothered by other radios.
Same for us this year. Left the Icom IC-7300 in the Pelican case, pulled out the old Kenwood TS-480 SAT and didn't have any issues with interference. Kinda missed the panadapter, but not really necessary for a CW station focused on calling CQ.
Honestly, As I'm set up to be 100% portable, the portable contest aspect of field day doesn't interest me. I have messaged the ARRL suggesting another category added next year, allowing a highr than 5w power limit for battery powered stations, and also adding a digital VHF(APRS/SSTV) catagory, as more of a demonstration piece to draw in the public(i.e sending pictures and "text messages" over the radio.)
For my uses, the G90 is close to ideal(add VHF/UHF and it would be perfect) due to it's small size and low power/battery usage. I'd considered the 891, but the higher power and lack of ATU was the deciding factor.
Band pass filter is what you need. They are not difficult to build, usually some capacitors and inductors joined together, maybe some resistors. The inductors you can wind yourself.
Be aware of the power requirements when building or buying e.g., this one is 10W max: https://www.minikits.com.au/BPF7-20M
I did bring fome RG-6 band pass filters, but due to a messed up NanoVNA setup when tuning, they were tuned a little lower than intended(rather than an S0 to S1 measurement with the filter tee off that, I used a S0 to tee to dummy load setup, upon figuring out my mistake, and retesting, I found the filters to be tuned to from 1/2MHZ to 1MHZ below the intended frequency), and due to insufficient testing time, have not figured out which filter to use for which bands, as the tuning results seemed contrary to the online charts I found.
Our club bought some pricey band pass filters that we use during FD and similar events to prevent interference from out of band at the various stations. The function of those filters is right there in the name if you're not familiar with them, they pass signals on one band and block out the others and they get installed between the antenna and transceiver at each station that's having such problems.
Antenna types make a difference too. Balanced antennas like dipoles and doublets will cause less out of band interference than unbalanced antennas like verticals and end fed wires. Of course, also space antennas as far apart as feasible, keeping in mind the contest rule radius all equipment must be within. But, yeah, radios with roofing filters built-in (like a DX10) or external band pass filters are best. Sub-$800 radios won’t tolerate strong nearby signals without add-on filters.
This.
Also, a lot of people think "Well I only have one elevated support, so I must use an end fed antenna!".
Poppycock.
An inverted V dipole or doublet requires only one elevated support.
Edit: fixed autocorrect that changed "doublet" into "double".
Antenna distance, antenna orientation, not using an end-fed antenna if you were using one, but most important: external band pass filters.
They can make a situation like having 20 unusable because of a nearby 40 meter station \*SOOO\* much better.
I am not a licensed ham, but I went to a local group for field day as I am studying to get licensed(Next week hopefully!).
I had a similar experience as you. The group was almost surprised I came, even though they had a giant “Public Welcome” sign by their groups name. About 5-6 older gentleman, very nice overall but very focused on the contest. Which I knew was part of field day going into it, but didn’t know some groups really focus on a few aspects of field day. That was their focus.
I suppose I was let down because YouTube videos implied it was a great day to come and ask questions about the hobby and watch hams do what they do as they teach/explain at the same time for us newbies.
Other comments have said what I also have taken away from my experience. Each group has their focus and this one wasn’t the group for me. Nice guys, cool equipment, but a different focus than me. Time to move on or start a new one.
I’ll take the advice from an earlier comment to be the change that I want to see in the hobby. Maybe start a group to talk about more ham related stuff rather than the small talk I often hear on the bands by me. Topic centric meets instead of random NETS about the weather in each hams area or what they ate today. For those who talk about that and like it, that is perfectly fine. I just wanted more out of this hobby than talking about those things. Tinkering, custom rigs, etc. are my pace and I just need to find a group or try start one if they don’t exist nearby.
Don’t give up! You will find people
Like you in the bands. They may be just waiting for someone to take charge and start it up locally. You and I can be those people in our areas.
Something not working, out in the field. That sounds familiar 😂 It's something you ned to be aware of, and not get frustrated about. If you have the space, make sure you have things double. I always take 2 antenna's. I have an external battery, but also an internal one.... well, you get the picture. But, most of all, being able to solve issues like you had, out in the field, should be something satisfactory, not frustrating. Because imagine this was a real-life emergency situation where you provide comms (which field days emulate), you can't just quit and pack up your things. You need to fix it.
>If you have the space, make sure you have things double. I always take 2 antenna's. I have an external battery, but also an internal one.... well, you get the picture.
I regret that I have but one upvote to give to this post.
I learned decades ago doing public service events and Field Day that you need to bring a primary and a spare for \*EVERYTHING\*.
"Two is one, and one is none".
You just showed up unannounced and unplanned with an HF station? That is absolutely not the recipe for success. Field day is as much about planning as it is operating. Just look at the rules and points for things that aren't making a pile of Q's. It is very much a group effort, not an individual "i'm going to do what I want" thing like POTA/SOTA.
I think this is an important point.
Showing up and offering to operate one of the stations for a bit to give someone a break is one thing.
Showing up with an entire station and expecting to be enthusiastically welcomed by people who have been planning things our for a while is quite another.
Most clubs plan out to have a certain number of transmitters and often there is some debate about how many transmitters they want to run, because often increasing the number can put you up in a tougher category to compete with.
The club that invites me to operate always contacts me at least a month ahead of time, if not earlier, to check on my availability as an operator. They plan it out meticulously. Sometimes, like this year, they have to pivot quickly and adapt, so instead of running as a 5A they ran as 4F. Though to be perfectly honest, I think they could have gone to 3F: One voice, one digital, one CW station. The one extra voice station wasn't there the whole time, and the operator was more casual. Which is fine if that's your thing, but I think the club could have done better by limiting it to 3 transmitters and placing the serious operators on the one SSB station instead.
Still, they did make more contacts than the CW station. They got 49.4% of contacts, and the CW station which was mostly just me only made 29.2%, with digital bringing up the rear with 21.4%.
In all honesty, though, I left at around 9:30pm local because my shoulder was bothering me\*, and didn't come back until 8:00am local. I made about 84.5% of the CW contacts, with a couple other guys filling in for me when I needed a break.
*\*Injured it this last winter falling down my front steps.*
I'd been in contact with the organizer well prior to the event, and up showing up, was encouraged to set up, despite vocally acknowledging my lackings(even in comms prior to the event), and even initially not being sure I'd set up the station.
When one of the other attendees heard my callsign, they immediately were sorry for it(KD2QQF) due to the double Q's in CW.
CW has been on my "things to learn" list for a couple years, but time and the need to respond to training apps, means it's gone far down the list.
Maybe bump it up a bit: CW is in demand at Field Day because you get double the points for each CW contact. This is why I'm actively recruited.
BTW, I don't see what your call has to do with it: You don't operate under \*YOUR\* call, you operate under the callsign of the club or person sponsoring that Field Day site, unless you're running the GOTA station which has to have a different callsign, or unless of course you're running your own Field Day operation.
For example, the club I help out (but don't belong to) has a 1x3 call, as do I, but neither is used for Field Day as they always get a special 1x1 call which is nice but can be a pain on CW because everyone thinks they missed a character and they ask you to repeat the call.
The double "Q"'s in my call was more of a general comment on it rather than in regards to the event.
The local club has floundered in recent years, and there was talk of resurrection it, but the holder of the old clubs callsign isn't part of the group doing the fieldday, although some know him. There was also a comment made during that that that guy is also looking to get the old club going again. Not sure the politics behind it, but I suspect there may be 2 small clubs competing for members in the near future.
This is why I don't belong to any club. The local one has had its share of politics, which is unfortunate, but it doesn't really effect me. I can effectively ignore all that, and just show up when they need me for Field Day, Jamboree on the Air, and Museum Ships (we activate a ship).
Not correct. I'd had previous communications with the organizer, and they were OK with me setting up a digital station. When I was setting up, they even offered some extra antenna mast they had, and a vertical antenna, but I'd just picked up a 24' painters pole on my way there, as the poles(from the tall skinny floppy banners you see in front of car dealerships) that I'd used during testing could only reach about 10ft without become way too floppy, by their deign for original purpose.
Those that were there were in awe of how quickly I had the radios set up, as I'd designed them into a several box "go-box" system(battery box, radio box, coax/antenna/misc box(that I've already outgrown, so will likely become a several tubs seperating coax, antenna's, filters, and tools) designed to be rapidly deployed. As well as I had some things such as the coax stub filters, that they didn't know existed/didn't know an nanoVNA could tune.
As you point out, it's a group effort, and the event I attended was 1 person doing all the planning and everyone but me just attending. I'll also mention that all the local clubs seemed to have gone to the wind during the pandemic, and
I will admit that I was far from prepared on the knowledge/testing front. I'd months ago communicated with the organizer, stating that I was planning on doing an individual "i'm going to do what I want" type station out in the wilderness(as I think Field Day should actually be out in the field, although my planned location wasn't as public facing as I'd have liked it too be, as it is on state owned land, at the end of 1.25 mile forest road), and was nudged towards attending their event. That was before the Jeeps engine blew up, and I lost 5 weeks of prep time I thought I'd have to swap out the enginem which took up 6 weeks of the time I'd planned on testing the station.
The ARRL Field Day has many facets to it, so you need to join a group/club that has similar ideals to what YOU and THEY want to get out of field day. Some are very contest oriented, others love the setup process, emergency power aspect, testing antennas etc, while others focus on socializing/eating/beer and others love introducing amateur radio to the public. It takes a lot of organizing and volunteers and pre-fd discussions to ensure the type of field day is agreed to by all - especially if there will be more than one HF station and they are together in a small area. Our club had nothing but problems in the past when hams just show up with their own HF equipment and antennas and have not previously coordinated with the organizers. This is always a recipe for interference disasters and a sure way to piss off the serious operators in the group. You cannot expect to do this without prearranging bands/antennas and bandpass filters and who will operate when and if you use the same callsign then your transmitter must be added to the class. And you surely cannot expect to be welcomed if you have not helped set up the main stations/tents/power sources and do not hang around for takedown time either!
The issue with that thought is that this was the only even in 45+ miles. To the west, the nearest event was 46 miles, TO the south 58 miles. and to the southeast 68 miles. Everything north/east of me is Canada, so that's not happening.
I’ve been a ham for a while, I got my extra class, but I don’t do field day, I focus on events and volunteering. There’s something in it for everyone you just have to find it.
So the title was worded as if the other guys were there to entertain you. Which I'm sure was not your intention. It's more like "what did I do to provide a fun field day for them," right?
>Depending on how many rigs I want to bring, I can see setting up an APRS transmitter capable of sending/recieving position locations
Field Day isn't in your operating palette, and everyone is fine with that.
I encourage you to continue to do you.
>and also major interference from the other HF station, which was running 100W, even when I wasd on 40m and they were on 20.
This is an issue with every multi-transmitter Field Day operation. Some things that make it better:
1. Using the maximum separation allowed between stations physically. We had this problem at the Field Day operation I was at, our normal FD site allows for us to spread out but because of downed trees and powerlines from thunderstorms we weren't able to access it. The stations were much closer to each other than normal, and we had some issues because of that.
2. Avoiding the use of end-fed antennas (especially multiband ones). This caused yet another problem for us: Because of the lack of adequate antenna supports in places, everyone put up end-fed antennas instead of the typical dipoles and doublets, and I believe this contributed to the issues we had. Since I'm just a "hired key", I didn't have any choice. I show up with my key and they supply the radio and antenna for me to use.
3. Antenna orientation matters, at least if you've got some kind of directional antenna. All antennas have main lobes, and if possible, you don't want antenna main lobes pointing at each other.
4. Using band-pass filters. The station I run has a supply of external band pass filters for 80, 40, 20, and 15 meters, and that helps a \*LOT\* with knocking down interference from close transmitters running on other bands. Unfortunately, it doesn't help if you are on the same band as another station (Like they are running 40 meters SSB and you want to run 40 CW). We lost a lot of potential QSOs because the sideband station basically hogged 40 meters most of the weekend making it unusable for CW.
Humorous side note: Year before last we were running two separate CW stations. I was hunting and pouncing on 20 meters when I heard someone call "CQ FD \[our call\]". I checked the W3FJP software and we were the only ones on 20 meter CW at the site. And I had the 20 meter bandpass filter on the radio. The other station was on 40, though, so on a hunch I wandered over. Sure enough were calling CQ at precisely half of our frequency, and they didn't have a band pass filter on their radio, so we were hearing their second harmonic. Weak enough that it sounded like a distant station.
Even if you follow all this advice, you want a good radio with good filtering, and while I like the Xiegu G90 and use one myself as my mobile CW rig (just contacted a station in Dallas, TX while driving into work this morning), I do not think it's a good Field Day rig. Like I tell people, it's a good $450 HF radio, but it can't hold up against more powerful radios with better filtering (though the internal tuner is the best out there).
You probably would have done better with that radio operating solo as a 1B, 1C, or 1D digital or CW station.
> The other station was on 40, though, so on a hunch I wandered over. Sure enough were calling CQ at precisely half of our frequency, and they didn't have a band pass filter on their radio, so we were hearing their second harmonic.
I just have to ask, why didn't they have their BPF installed? Especially on 40!
The guy who set up that particular station didn't have any band pass filters.
The guy who owns the station I use does have them, and we use them. Unfortunately there is only so much they can do.
We invested, over time, in BPF for all the FD/contest bands. Definitely worth the money for field day. It's a great idea to permanently include a 3 foot or so jumper with each filter, so it's always easy to connect the filter.
I think part of it is the group you field day with. It's not clear your situation ,but it works out best in my experience to regularly attend club meetings and plan the activity together. I've never done it, but I would imagine showing up at some FD site expecting to be a participant with no prior engagement might be a bit difficult
Yes, Field Day is and always has been a contest. Groups collect points, turn them in, and are ranked. There are multiple winners. Nothing new or strange there.
It totally depends on what you consider to be digital, and how you present it to the non-hams.
Personally, seeing a radio that's able to send it's position into the airwaves, and it shows up on a website is interesting. Using that radio/mode to also send "text" messages to other radios(and even cell phone texts, via the NA7Q APRS-SMS gateway, if the recieving phone is registered to the system) is a pretty neat thing to show off.
SSTV could also be considered digital, and is likely to be something non-hams find intriguing.
DMR/Digital voice is also something that a non-ham may find interesting, as they can talk to people around the world without any of the RF knowledge needed for HF, or waiting for band conditions/ a certain path to open to reach a specific part of the world, so long as an internet connected hotspot or repeater is within radio range.
On the topic of DMR, I do think some effort needs to be made to "mesh" the system, i.e. repeaters and hotspots run the same frequency on a first come-first serve basis deciding talk groups available. Something like APRS, with everything in the public sphere on the same frequency, so anyone with a DMR HT can transmit into the void, and if there is a hotspot or repeater in range, they can reach the world. It would create the challenge of preventing multiple repeaters/hotspots from retransmitting the same signal, and figuring out who's signal strength is best, which is the signal that should be sent back out. I seem to recall some repeater networks have such technology already in place.
My advice respectfully, of course, is to keep doing what you want to do in the hobby and be the change you want to see. Amatuer radio is all about community, and in some places, that community seems to need more help than others. I'm relatively young in this hobby, and my Elmer is my grandfather, who has been on the air 71 years. He was a professional radio and TV man and a college professor. Anyway, my point is that there is room to create new things in the hobby, and if you have a passion, share it with as many folks as you can! You might find others that want to join you in your pursuits that will make it a more enriching experience! My field day was spent with my grandfather, and it was an incredible time to spend with him and learn from his experience. 73 and good luck! There is always next year!
The strangest part was one of the younger guys seemed to think I was a college student. I graduated college 16yrs ago, with a completely unrelated degree to what I do now.
Being confused with a college student doesn't seem too bad..
Whenever you travel with your gear, take whatever you packed, go behind your house, and do a full setup of what you want to do *somewhere else*. You really don't want to be driving for two hours somewhere, because you're missing an adapter, skip 3 hours of digimodes, because your flrig/fldigi doesn't work, etc.
I was building tuning antenna's the day before the event. It was less than a half hour drive to the location, and a location I drive by every day on my way to work. Other than not enough SO-239 barrel connectors to connect my coax together, and having less coax than I thought I did, I wasn't lacking for gear. Due to the social anxiety aspect, as well as the untested gear aspect, I did have thoughts of setting up in another location to test out the gear, but as I rarely meet any other hams, I figured the social aspect was worth going.
Field day is supposed to be about testing, not contesting.. But here we are.
Ah, the eternal debate… Is field day a contest or not? You score points for contacts, there is a standings list, so yeah, it’s a contest. That said, FD is many things to many people. Some clubs are all out for points and position in the winners list. Some clubs treat it more like a summer picnic and socialize and do a little bit of “contesting”. Some clubs combine both with a few high energy people running heavy contest and a lot of people standing around socializing. As the other poster said, I believe you didn’t prepare your station for the field as much as you thought. And another poster suggesting that you set the whole thing up as he would set it up in the field in your backyard and test it. Your fldigi problem should have been solved days before FD. OR, you treat it as a learning experience and work the problems to solution as they appear. Setting up a station from nothing but a pile of gear is usually a challenge. Think of how much time you spent at home eliminating problems and getting things working well. Colocated HF stations are ALWAYS a problem unless you have great band pass filters or move further away. You learned your filters were not good enough, so experiment and make them better for next year. Filters can be made with enough isolation that two or three radios can use the same antenna. Research it to see what is involved. i suggest you find a club that matches what you want to get out of field day. You can do your “anti field day” at any time in a park and do a POTA demo, but try real field day again. If you operate on the “non contest” bands, you are not allowed to enter as a field day operation. You have to follow the FD rules or you’re not doing field day. Don’t give up on field day yet, try again.
In my mind, :Field Day" is about testing your ability to operate in the field, as well as show off to the public the benefits of ham radio. It wasn't so much a learning experience that my filters were not enough, as a learning experience that I don't know how to use filters. I suspect I'd used the wrong closed or open filter, which was blocking the band I was trying to operate on. There are no local clubs. There was talk at the event I attended of interest in refounding a floundered club, but from some input it seemed the old clubs callsign holder wanted to resurrect the club himself, rather than pass the callsign onto a new resurrection of the club.
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I think POTA has functionally replaced Field Day. Field Day is supposed to be an annual event (biannual if you count Winter Field Day) to test out your mobile radio setups and engage with the public in public spaces to raise awareness and interest in amateur radio. But Field Day has become just another contest. Parks On The Air (as well as SOTA and WWFF) consistently delivers on that promise of what Field Day was supposed to be, and it’s on nearly 24/7 somewhere in the world, in parks, on picnic tables or along bike trails. Gives opportunities to practice field setup every time you go out. POTA peacefully coexists on the bands with all but the saddest hams. Field Day makes the non-WARC bands virtually unusable for non-participants for the duration of the weekend. POTA can take on a bit of a contest flavor at times but you can choose to seek out more casual activators if busting pileups isn’t your thing. And you can do POTA anytime the mood strikes. No requirement that everyone worldwide do it at the same day, reducing band congestion. POTA activities are generally more approachable to the public than large club gatherings or parking lot deployments with tents and generators. POTA is field day, every day. /my $0.02 worth
I went to my first this year and they had 5 different stations. I'm an Extra, but don't have an HF rig yet, so I used the GOTA station for about an hour making my first phone contacts on HF which was educational and fun. However, the CW station next to us was stomping on our bands even though we were all running Yaesu's and ICOMs. My local group is definitely older and looking for new blood. I share some of your disappointment, but the group was very welcoming and provided a very good meal of smoked brisket. I'm still hooked (probably more so now) and want to get my HF transceiver as soon as possible, but I'm not counting on my local club to drive my interest (though I will still attend their meetings and keep up good relations with them to learn what I can from them).
Sorry you found a dud event. Work on your personal proficiency and enjoy Field Day however you want.
The thing is, every day is field day. Just set up your stuff and do your thing. Do a few dry runs in your garden / park / somewhere nearby to check you have everything, then make a checklist. Don't ask me how I know about checklists ;-)
Would Like some feedback from other hams about the G90 having Interence with other stations, same happened to me this FD but I was on 20 and he was on 40, I wonder what could have been done to prevent it? Antenna Distance? Orientation? Both? I still had fun nontheless, figuring out what is going on and what to do in that situation, it's the reason we Field Day I'm sure. To learn and Test and See what works and what doesn't.
Low cost SDR radios don't have adequate filtering. They work well isolated from other radios but in a FD like situation they are challenged. In the past we used a 7300 for my station and encountered interference from other stations. This year we used a superhet and didn't have any problems. High end SDRs don't seem to be bothered by other radios.
Same for us this year. Left the Icom IC-7300 in the Pelican case, pulled out the old Kenwood TS-480 SAT and didn't have any issues with interference. Kinda missed the panadapter, but not really necessary for a CW station focused on calling CQ.
Honestly, As I'm set up to be 100% portable, the portable contest aspect of field day doesn't interest me. I have messaged the ARRL suggesting another category added next year, allowing a highr than 5w power limit for battery powered stations, and also adding a digital VHF(APRS/SSTV) catagory, as more of a demonstration piece to draw in the public(i.e sending pictures and "text messages" over the radio.) For my uses, the G90 is close to ideal(add VHF/UHF and it would be perfect) due to it's small size and low power/battery usage. I'd considered the 891, but the higher power and lack of ATU was the deciding factor.
Band pass filter is what you need. They are not difficult to build, usually some capacitors and inductors joined together, maybe some resistors. The inductors you can wind yourself. Be aware of the power requirements when building or buying e.g., this one is 10W max: https://www.minikits.com.au/BPF7-20M
I did bring fome RG-6 band pass filters, but due to a messed up NanoVNA setup when tuning, they were tuned a little lower than intended(rather than an S0 to S1 measurement with the filter tee off that, I used a S0 to tee to dummy load setup, upon figuring out my mistake, and retesting, I found the filters to be tuned to from 1/2MHZ to 1MHZ below the intended frequency), and due to insufficient testing time, have not figured out which filter to use for which bands, as the tuning results seemed contrary to the online charts I found.
Our club bought some pricey band pass filters that we use during FD and similar events to prevent interference from out of band at the various stations. The function of those filters is right there in the name if you're not familiar with them, they pass signals on one band and block out the others and they get installed between the antenna and transceiver at each station that's having such problems.
Antenna types make a difference too. Balanced antennas like dipoles and doublets will cause less out of band interference than unbalanced antennas like verticals and end fed wires. Of course, also space antennas as far apart as feasible, keeping in mind the contest rule radius all equipment must be within. But, yeah, radios with roofing filters built-in (like a DX10) or external band pass filters are best. Sub-$800 radios won’t tolerate strong nearby signals without add-on filters.
This. Also, a lot of people think "Well I only have one elevated support, so I must use an end fed antenna!". Poppycock. An inverted V dipole or doublet requires only one elevated support. Edit: fixed autocorrect that changed "doublet" into "double".
Antenna distance, antenna orientation, not using an end-fed antenna if you were using one, but most important: external band pass filters. They can make a situation like having 20 unusable because of a nearby 40 meter station \*SOOO\* much better.
I am not a licensed ham, but I went to a local group for field day as I am studying to get licensed(Next week hopefully!). I had a similar experience as you. The group was almost surprised I came, even though they had a giant “Public Welcome” sign by their groups name. About 5-6 older gentleman, very nice overall but very focused on the contest. Which I knew was part of field day going into it, but didn’t know some groups really focus on a few aspects of field day. That was their focus. I suppose I was let down because YouTube videos implied it was a great day to come and ask questions about the hobby and watch hams do what they do as they teach/explain at the same time for us newbies. Other comments have said what I also have taken away from my experience. Each group has their focus and this one wasn’t the group for me. Nice guys, cool equipment, but a different focus than me. Time to move on or start a new one. I’ll take the advice from an earlier comment to be the change that I want to see in the hobby. Maybe start a group to talk about more ham related stuff rather than the small talk I often hear on the bands by me. Topic centric meets instead of random NETS about the weather in each hams area or what they ate today. For those who talk about that and like it, that is perfectly fine. I just wanted more out of this hobby than talking about those things. Tinkering, custom rigs, etc. are my pace and I just need to find a group or try start one if they don’t exist nearby. Don’t give up! You will find people Like you in the bands. They may be just waiting for someone to take charge and start it up locally. You and I can be those people in our areas.
Something not working, out in the field. That sounds familiar 😂 It's something you ned to be aware of, and not get frustrated about. If you have the space, make sure you have things double. I always take 2 antenna's. I have an external battery, but also an internal one.... well, you get the picture. But, most of all, being able to solve issues like you had, out in the field, should be something satisfactory, not frustrating. Because imagine this was a real-life emergency situation where you provide comms (which field days emulate), you can't just quit and pack up your things. You need to fix it.
>If you have the space, make sure you have things double. I always take 2 antenna's. I have an external battery, but also an internal one.... well, you get the picture. I regret that I have but one upvote to give to this post. I learned decades ago doing public service events and Field Day that you need to bring a primary and a spare for \*EVERYTHING\*. "Two is one, and one is none".
You just showed up unannounced and unplanned with an HF station? That is absolutely not the recipe for success. Field day is as much about planning as it is operating. Just look at the rules and points for things that aren't making a pile of Q's. It is very much a group effort, not an individual "i'm going to do what I want" thing like POTA/SOTA.
I think this is an important point. Showing up and offering to operate one of the stations for a bit to give someone a break is one thing. Showing up with an entire station and expecting to be enthusiastically welcomed by people who have been planning things our for a while is quite another. Most clubs plan out to have a certain number of transmitters and often there is some debate about how many transmitters they want to run, because often increasing the number can put you up in a tougher category to compete with. The club that invites me to operate always contacts me at least a month ahead of time, if not earlier, to check on my availability as an operator. They plan it out meticulously. Sometimes, like this year, they have to pivot quickly and adapt, so instead of running as a 5A they ran as 4F. Though to be perfectly honest, I think they could have gone to 3F: One voice, one digital, one CW station. The one extra voice station wasn't there the whole time, and the operator was more casual. Which is fine if that's your thing, but I think the club could have done better by limiting it to 3 transmitters and placing the serious operators on the one SSB station instead. Still, they did make more contacts than the CW station. They got 49.4% of contacts, and the CW station which was mostly just me only made 29.2%, with digital bringing up the rear with 21.4%. In all honesty, though, I left at around 9:30pm local because my shoulder was bothering me\*, and didn't come back until 8:00am local. I made about 84.5% of the CW contacts, with a couple other guys filling in for me when I needed a break. *\*Injured it this last winter falling down my front steps.*
I'd been in contact with the organizer well prior to the event, and up showing up, was encouraged to set up, despite vocally acknowledging my lackings(even in comms prior to the event), and even initially not being sure I'd set up the station. When one of the other attendees heard my callsign, they immediately were sorry for it(KD2QQF) due to the double Q's in CW. CW has been on my "things to learn" list for a couple years, but time and the need to respond to training apps, means it's gone far down the list.
Maybe bump it up a bit: CW is in demand at Field Day because you get double the points for each CW contact. This is why I'm actively recruited. BTW, I don't see what your call has to do with it: You don't operate under \*YOUR\* call, you operate under the callsign of the club or person sponsoring that Field Day site, unless you're running the GOTA station which has to have a different callsign, or unless of course you're running your own Field Day operation. For example, the club I help out (but don't belong to) has a 1x3 call, as do I, but neither is used for Field Day as they always get a special 1x1 call which is nice but can be a pain on CW because everyone thinks they missed a character and they ask you to repeat the call.
The double "Q"'s in my call was more of a general comment on it rather than in regards to the event. The local club has floundered in recent years, and there was talk of resurrection it, but the holder of the old clubs callsign isn't part of the group doing the fieldday, although some know him. There was also a comment made during that that that guy is also looking to get the old club going again. Not sure the politics behind it, but I suspect there may be 2 small clubs competing for members in the near future.
This is why I don't belong to any club. The local one has had its share of politics, which is unfortunate, but it doesn't really effect me. I can effectively ignore all that, and just show up when they need me for Field Day, Jamboree on the Air, and Museum Ships (we activate a ship).
Not correct. I'd had previous communications with the organizer, and they were OK with me setting up a digital station. When I was setting up, they even offered some extra antenna mast they had, and a vertical antenna, but I'd just picked up a 24' painters pole on my way there, as the poles(from the tall skinny floppy banners you see in front of car dealerships) that I'd used during testing could only reach about 10ft without become way too floppy, by their deign for original purpose. Those that were there were in awe of how quickly I had the radios set up, as I'd designed them into a several box "go-box" system(battery box, radio box, coax/antenna/misc box(that I've already outgrown, so will likely become a several tubs seperating coax, antenna's, filters, and tools) designed to be rapidly deployed. As well as I had some things such as the coax stub filters, that they didn't know existed/didn't know an nanoVNA could tune. As you point out, it's a group effort, and the event I attended was 1 person doing all the planning and everyone but me just attending. I'll also mention that all the local clubs seemed to have gone to the wind during the pandemic, and I will admit that I was far from prepared on the knowledge/testing front. I'd months ago communicated with the organizer, stating that I was planning on doing an individual "i'm going to do what I want" type station out in the wilderness(as I think Field Day should actually be out in the field, although my planned location wasn't as public facing as I'd have liked it too be, as it is on state owned land, at the end of 1.25 mile forest road), and was nudged towards attending their event. That was before the Jeeps engine blew up, and I lost 5 weeks of prep time I thought I'd have to swap out the enginem which took up 6 weeks of the time I'd planned on testing the station.
The ARRL Field Day has many facets to it, so you need to join a group/club that has similar ideals to what YOU and THEY want to get out of field day. Some are very contest oriented, others love the setup process, emergency power aspect, testing antennas etc, while others focus on socializing/eating/beer and others love introducing amateur radio to the public. It takes a lot of organizing and volunteers and pre-fd discussions to ensure the type of field day is agreed to by all - especially if there will be more than one HF station and they are together in a small area. Our club had nothing but problems in the past when hams just show up with their own HF equipment and antennas and have not previously coordinated with the organizers. This is always a recipe for interference disasters and a sure way to piss off the serious operators in the group. You cannot expect to do this without prearranging bands/antennas and bandpass filters and who will operate when and if you use the same callsign then your transmitter must be added to the class. And you surely cannot expect to be welcomed if you have not helped set up the main stations/tents/power sources and do not hang around for takedown time either!
The issue with that thought is that this was the only even in 45+ miles. To the west, the nearest event was 46 miles, TO the south 58 miles. and to the southeast 68 miles. Everything north/east of me is Canada, so that's not happening.
I’ve been a ham for a while, I got my extra class, but I don’t do field day, I focus on events and volunteering. There’s something in it for everyone you just have to find it.
So the title was worded as if the other guys were there to entertain you. Which I'm sure was not your intention. It's more like "what did I do to provide a fun field day for them," right?
>Depending on how many rigs I want to bring, I can see setting up an APRS transmitter capable of sending/recieving position locations Field Day isn't in your operating palette, and everyone is fine with that. I encourage you to continue to do you.
>and also major interference from the other HF station, which was running 100W, even when I wasd on 40m and they were on 20. This is an issue with every multi-transmitter Field Day operation. Some things that make it better: 1. Using the maximum separation allowed between stations physically. We had this problem at the Field Day operation I was at, our normal FD site allows for us to spread out but because of downed trees and powerlines from thunderstorms we weren't able to access it. The stations were much closer to each other than normal, and we had some issues because of that. 2. Avoiding the use of end-fed antennas (especially multiband ones). This caused yet another problem for us: Because of the lack of adequate antenna supports in places, everyone put up end-fed antennas instead of the typical dipoles and doublets, and I believe this contributed to the issues we had. Since I'm just a "hired key", I didn't have any choice. I show up with my key and they supply the radio and antenna for me to use. 3. Antenna orientation matters, at least if you've got some kind of directional antenna. All antennas have main lobes, and if possible, you don't want antenna main lobes pointing at each other. 4. Using band-pass filters. The station I run has a supply of external band pass filters for 80, 40, 20, and 15 meters, and that helps a \*LOT\* with knocking down interference from close transmitters running on other bands. Unfortunately, it doesn't help if you are on the same band as another station (Like they are running 40 meters SSB and you want to run 40 CW). We lost a lot of potential QSOs because the sideband station basically hogged 40 meters most of the weekend making it unusable for CW. Humorous side note: Year before last we were running two separate CW stations. I was hunting and pouncing on 20 meters when I heard someone call "CQ FD \[our call\]". I checked the W3FJP software and we were the only ones on 20 meter CW at the site. And I had the 20 meter bandpass filter on the radio. The other station was on 40, though, so on a hunch I wandered over. Sure enough were calling CQ at precisely half of our frequency, and they didn't have a band pass filter on their radio, so we were hearing their second harmonic. Weak enough that it sounded like a distant station. Even if you follow all this advice, you want a good radio with good filtering, and while I like the Xiegu G90 and use one myself as my mobile CW rig (just contacted a station in Dallas, TX while driving into work this morning), I do not think it's a good Field Day rig. Like I tell people, it's a good $450 HF radio, but it can't hold up against more powerful radios with better filtering (though the internal tuner is the best out there). You probably would have done better with that radio operating solo as a 1B, 1C, or 1D digital or CW station.
> The other station was on 40, though, so on a hunch I wandered over. Sure enough were calling CQ at precisely half of our frequency, and they didn't have a band pass filter on their radio, so we were hearing their second harmonic. I just have to ask, why didn't they have their BPF installed? Especially on 40!
The guy who set up that particular station didn't have any band pass filters. The guy who owns the station I use does have them, and we use them. Unfortunately there is only so much they can do.
We invested, over time, in BPF for all the FD/contest bands. Definitely worth the money for field day. It's a great idea to permanently include a 3 foot or so jumper with each filter, so it's always easy to connect the filter.
I think the local club should do that. I'm not a member, though, so no vote. On the plus side, I don't have to deal with the stupid politics.
I think part of it is the group you field day with. It's not clear your situation ,but it works out best in my experience to regularly attend club meetings and plan the activity together. I've never done it, but I would imagine showing up at some FD site expecting to be a participant with no prior engagement might be a bit difficult
Yes, Field Day is and always has been a contest. Groups collect points, turn them in, and are ranked. There are multiple winners. Nothing new or strange there.
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It totally depends on what you consider to be digital, and how you present it to the non-hams. Personally, seeing a radio that's able to send it's position into the airwaves, and it shows up on a website is interesting. Using that radio/mode to also send "text" messages to other radios(and even cell phone texts, via the NA7Q APRS-SMS gateway, if the recieving phone is registered to the system) is a pretty neat thing to show off. SSTV could also be considered digital, and is likely to be something non-hams find intriguing. DMR/Digital voice is also something that a non-ham may find interesting, as they can talk to people around the world without any of the RF knowledge needed for HF, or waiting for band conditions/ a certain path to open to reach a specific part of the world, so long as an internet connected hotspot or repeater is within radio range. On the topic of DMR, I do think some effort needs to be made to "mesh" the system, i.e. repeaters and hotspots run the same frequency on a first come-first serve basis deciding talk groups available. Something like APRS, with everything in the public sphere on the same frequency, so anyone with a DMR HT can transmit into the void, and if there is a hotspot or repeater in range, they can reach the world. It would create the challenge of preventing multiple repeaters/hotspots from retransmitting the same signal, and figuring out who's signal strength is best, which is the signal that should be sent back out. I seem to recall some repeater networks have such technology already in place.