UARC Field Day 2006

Linda, N7HVF, (foreground) acts as Elmer for the "Get-on-the-Air" station.

W7SP was once again on the air for the annual Field Day contest, held this year June 24 and 25. In charge was Bryan Mogensen, W7CBM, who had generously volunteered as this year's Field Day Chairman. UARC operated from its traditional site near Payson Lakes. A few folks camped almost the entire week leading up to Field Day, and by Friday morning there was a good-sized crowd in place.

Setup started at noon on Friday. This year four stations were put in operation: 20-meter phone, 20-meter CW, 40-meter phone, and PSK-31. More folks gathered Friday evening, but tuning the installation went on almost until the starting bell at noon on Saturday. This was the first year for a magic networking box built by our Treasurer, Chuck Johnson, WA7JOS. Large numbers of stations dictate long cable runs for the computer networking. This, in past years, had created some problems with the computers having enough current capacity to drive long lines. Another problem involved a cable becoming inadvertently disconnected or a logging computer being turned off, thus breaking the loop. Chuck's box solved these problems, providing regeneration at the mid-point of all the lines, and sensing a disconnected computer and automatically bypassing it. One computer didn't get into the network until about an hour and a half into the contest, but once all the cables and connectors were working well, the system performed perfectly for the remaining 22-1/2 hours.

The club's tower supports a tri-bander.

Brett, N7KG, prepares to press the "Enter" key to initiate his first Field Day CW Contact. (Isn't the TRLog program wonderful?)

Turnout seemed a bit lighter than usual -- there were actually grassy spots that no one was camped in. Some of the downturn probably owed to another club luring away many of what have traditionally been our best operators.

This year 13 operators participated at the “Get On The Air” (GOTA) station, including six that were under 18 years old. Perhaps this will be the start of a new generation of contest ops.

John, N7MFQ, operates the PSK-31 station (which he supplied) after some initial troubleshooting was successful.

At the June UARC meeting, a show of hands indicated there were more people interested in PSK-31 operation than any other mode. Where did all those people go? The station was set up and made just 28 contacts for the whole 24-hour period. At least digital contacts count for two points each.

Some interference problems were solved by some antenna rearrangement. Some others remained. We thought we could get away with an IC-706 if it was just on six meters, but this seemed to be a bad assumption. These radios just don't seem to play nicely with others.

The total of five operators somehow multiplies as dinnertime approaches.

Unlike 2005, the weather was good, including the Saturday dinner. The dinner manifested the perennial miracle where a group that appeared tiny when signup sheets for operators went around, suddenly blossomed into half the population of Payson.

The 5-kW propane generator supplies all needed power.

The propane generator that is part of the club's trailer/tower package supplied all the power this year. It ran without a hitch from start to finish.

So how'd we do? Generally, a little worse than last year. We made 1397 QSOs compared to last year's 1706. (We gotta find some more CW operators!) Total estimated score is 5076 points compared to last year's 5538. That may even be a little worse within our class than the raw numbers indicate, because last year we entered in the 3A class (three simultaneous transmitters) and this year in 4A. The breakdown is below. Green-shaded columns are the 2005 numbers.

UARC 2006 Field Day Score Summary

The incredibly convincing photo of our public information table.