Field Day QTH

It’s almost time for the 2015 Field Day Event and we’ve been in high gear getting ready. Anita, AB1QB and I will be operating with the Nashua Area Radio Club, N1FD this year. The club was very active in WRT2014 and we were able to purchase several of the WRTC station and tower kits from that effort. I will be operating the 20m SSB station for Field Day and Anita and I decided to setup our station kit in our backyard last weekend to verify that all of our equipment was ready and in good working order. The first step was to pitch the wall tent from the WRTC kit. The tent and the associated tables/chairs can comfortably hold 3 – 4 people.

Field Data SSB Station Test

I will be using our Elecraft KX3 Transceiver again this year. We’ve added an outboard KXPA100 100w Amplifier to bring the station up to 100w and Elecraft’s very nice PX3 Panadapter. The combination makes a great 100W Field Day Station.

Elecraft KX3 Field Day Station

The picture above is a closer view of the setup. The KXPA100 Amplifier and the PX3 Panadapter are fully integrated with the KX3 and the combination creates a 100W transceiver with a useful Panadapter. The Panadapter should be helpful for Search and Pounce operation during Field Day. I’ve also added a Behringer HA400 four channel headphone amplifier (the unit on the right on top of the power supply) to the setup. This enables connection of a total of 4 sets of headphones to the station – one for the operator, one for a logger and two more pairs for folks to listen in on the fun. Our club has been doing a great deal of outreach to encourage new HAMs to join the hobby and I built this setup so that some of the new folks can listen in on our operation more easily. I will be using a Heil Pro 7 headset to operate and we will have 3 sets of Heil Pro Set 3 headphones for others to use. The Heil gear is very comfortable, light weight and sounds great over the air.

N1MM+ Logger

I will be using the excellent N1MM+ Logger for Field Day this year. It was very easy to setup N1MM+ to work with the KX3. I was also able to use it to trigger the KX3’s voice message memories for calling CQ and for calling in Search and Pounce mode. I am doing an N1MM+ clinic at our final Field Day prep meeting tonight to help others in our club to get going on the N1MM+ logger.

Generator Test

One of the many great aspects of Field Day is that it results in a test of one’s emergency equipment and operating skills each year. Our club has a large generator and power distribution system that we all share for Field Day so I used our station test session as a reason to get my smaller generators out for a test run. We have a pair of Honda EU2000 generators which can be used together to generate quite a bit of power. Here’s one of them in use during our station test.

Our club has quite a bit of antenna equipment, and we will be putting up two 40 ft towers and tri-band beams with Triplexes and Filters for our 20m, 15m, and 10m SSB and CW stations. I’ve built a 40m Delta Loop for our club to use for 40m SSB, and we’ll be putting up 40m and 80m inverted-V and dipole antennas to cover those bands. I plan to do another post after Field Day is done on the setup of our antennas and the N1FD operation. I hope to work some of our readers on the air during Field Day this year.

– Fred, AB1OC