160m Portable Antenna System for Field Day

January 29, 2019 by fkemmerer

160m Portable Antenna System for Field Day Station Diagram

The Nashua Area Radio Society tries to do something new each time we engage in an Emcom or other major operation. We decided to try Winter Field Day for the first time this year and we made one of our new elements a capable 160m portable antenna system and station for 160m.

It’s almost impossible to field an effective 160m station with only a Transmit antenna. Transmit antennas typically are too noisy for effective operation on the low bands. We decided to try a Beverage On The Ground antenna for the receive side of our 160m station. This proved to be a great choice.

Icom IC-7300 Transceiver

We’ve been using the Icom IC-7300 Transceiver almost exclusively for our Field Day stations for the last several years. Many of our members have this rig and its performance and excellent ergonomics make it a great choice. The problem was that we needed a receive antenna input to make the IC-7300 work with our 160m station plans.

INRAD Rx Input Mod for IC-7300

Fortunately, INRAD came to the rescue with a simple mod for the IC-7300 to add a separate Rx antenna input to the rig.

INRAD Rx Antenna Mod Installation

This mod is simple and is super easy to install. It took me about 30 minutes to do the mod and it worked great. Removed the jumper and you have a separate Rx antenna input. Put the jumper back and the radio performs as stock.

KD9SV Variable Gain Preamp

Rx antennas typically benefit from the inclusion of a low-noise preamplifier to boost the relatively weak signals from the antennas. We also want a bandpass filter to protect our 160m radio from overload and potential damage which might eliminate from the other transmitters in our Winter Field Day setup. The KD9SV Variable Gain Pre-Amp filled the bill nicely.

KD9SV Front End Saver

We also added a KD9SV Front-End Saver to ground the input to the preamplifier/radio combination when the IC-7300 goes into transmit to further protect the electronics from overload or damage when transmitting on 160m.

KD9SV RBOG Antenna Diagram

We used KD9SV Reversible Beverage On The Ground (RBOG) Transformers to build our receive antenna. The length of the beverage wire is critical in an RBOG setup as an RBOG antenna is a resonant antenna. We used the recommended 180 ft of dual conductor RBOG Antenna Wire to create an antenna for 160m.

RBOG Antenna Kit

An RBOG Antenna such as our must be well grounded at each end. This was accomplished with a pair of 4 ft ground rods and three 50 ft long radials at each end in a crows-foot configuration. All of the need components for the antenna including interconnect and power cables, ground straps, and the electronics were package in a case to keep everything together.

RBOG Antenna Installed In The Field

The photo above shows one end of the RBOG antenna installed in the Field. You can see both the radials and the feed line transformer attached to one of the ground rods. Our antenna was fed with 300 ft of 75-ohm flooded coax terminated with F connectors. The direction of the antenna can be easily reversed by interchanging the feed line and the 75-ohm terminator at this end of the antenna.

Station Test at our Winter Field Day

We decided to set up and test the receive side of 160m station at our Winter Field Day site in advance to work out any installation issues and to gauge the system’s potential performance. Unfortunately, we ended up doing the test in the middle of the day when 160m was basically dead. We also tested the antenna on the AM broadcast band which is just below 160m and we heard 2-3 AM station on every AM frequency in the middle of the day! This was a very good sign of what was to come…

Balun Designs Low-Band Optimized Balun

We built a 160m dipole for the transmit side of our 160m Portable Station. The heart of this antenna was a Balun Designs Balun optimized for operation on the low bands. Tuning of the antenna for best operation on the 160m band would have to wait until we had adequate space to set it up at our Winter Field Day site.

160m Transmit Antenna at Winter Field Day

Setting up our 160m Transmit Antenna was the first order business for the Wire Antenna Team at Winter Field Day. We put up a 50 ft guyed push-up mast and used a pull-rope to hoist the 160m Tx Antenna’s Balun to about 48 ft. We used an air cannon to shoot ropes through two tall trees at the ends of the antenna and got it close to flat-topped.

160m Tx Dipole SWR

After a little bit of careful tuning, we ended up very pleased with the end result. We had over 60 kHz of usable Tx bandwidth at the bottom of the 160m Band. We used the antenna as high as 1.838 MHz during Winter Field Day, and it performed great.

So how did the combination perform for us? Well, we made 133 CW contacts on the 160m band during the 24-hour Winter Field Day period, with the longest being to Missoula, MT – a 2,100 mi contact from here in New Hampshire. This is not bad for 100W and portable antennas on Top Band!

Fred, AB1OC

An Optimized 40m High Performance Antenna for Field Day

May 25, 2018 by fkemmerer

40m V-Beam Wire Antenna at Field Day

The Nashua Area Radio Society has been using a 3-element wire beam antenna for Field Day for the last several years. The antenna uses three guyed 50 ft. fiberglass masts from Max-Gain Systems. The antenna uses three inverted-V style elements separated by a little over 50 ft. Since we are in the northeastern United States, we can point the antenna on a fixed 260° heading, which covers the entire U.S. well.

40m V-Beam – EZNEC Antenna View

Our 40m V-Beam antenna was initially designed in EZNEC 5.0. It was manually optimized for decent gain and front-to-back performance, and it worked quite well. Recently, we decided to try automatic optimization software on the antenna as part of a tune-up on the design for Field Day 2018. After looking around on the Internet a bit, we discovered a software package called AutoEZ, which looked ideal for my project.

AutoEZ Antenna Modeling and Optimization Software – Wires Tab

AutoEZ is a collection of Visual Basic code and Microsoft Excel macros that act as a front-end to EZNEC 5.0 and later. AutoEZ provides a number of very useful enhancements to EZNEC, including:

Ability to use formulas and variables to construct and modify EZNEC wire models
A Test Case generator and execution environment to vary model parameters and graph the results calculations run by EZNEC
An automatic optimizer that can adjust the parameters of an antenna model in EZNEC to optimally meet a defined set of performance goals
Harnesses the full power of Microsoft Excel formulas for trigonometry, logical, and other mathematical capabilities for use in EZNEC modeling

AutoEZ Antenna Model Variables

The first step in the project was to rebuild the EZNEC model that I already had for our 40m V-Beam antenna in AutoEZ. I began by defining several AutoEZ Variables and Excel Formulas in the AutoEZ Variables Tab, which enabled me to easily modify the design of the antenna and to optimize it. Some of the basic variables included the target design frequency for the antenna, the height and separation of the antenna elements, the distance to the element anchor points, and the length of the element wires.

AutoEZ Antenna Model Variables (Formula View)

The image above shows the model variables in “Formula View.” You can see some of the math and trig functions that were used to compute values for some of the variables. AutoEZ can only optimize variables that do not contain formulas. Hence, I was careful to ensure that the base separation between the elements and the length of the element wires were Constants, as these are the parameters that I wanted to optimize later.

AutoEZ Antenna Modeling and Optimization Software – Wires Tab

Excel Trig formulas and the Variables were used on the Wires Tab to determine the coordinates of the wires in the antennas. There are a total of 7 wires in the model. Six are the two ends of the three inverted-V elements. The Seventh wire is a short 4″ section in the middle of the Driven Element to allow a current source to be inserted to drive the antenna there. I was careful to create an accurate model of the wire gauge, insulation, and loss that we are using for our V-beam

Model Variables to be Optimized

With the model built, it was back to the Variables Tab to select the parameters to be optimized. Optimization is best done as a multi-pass process, and I did this in two steps. The first set of runs included optimization of both the element spacings and their lengths. This led me to conclude that the mast spacing of 27 ft (Driven to Director) and 28 ft (Driven to Reflector) were the best choices. I then set these as fixed values in the variables tab and ran the optimizer a second time with some starting element lengths to optimize the element lengths by themselves.

Optimizer Objectives

One must create a set of frequencies and objectives for the optimizer before running it. This is done in the AutoEZ Optimize Tab. The antenna is being used for SSB on 40m so I choose a range of frequencies that covered the SSB sub-band on 40m. Note that I weighted the center frequency heavier than the edges by including it more times in the optimizer’s list. The use of the Optimization Objectives and their associated weights and values are well covered in the AutoEZ documentation, so I won’t cover them in detail here. The parameters above were chosen to create a reasonable balance between SWR values across the 40m SSB sub-band, good Front/Back and Front/Side performance from azimuth values ranging from 60º to 300º, and a reasonable amount of forward gain for a 3-element antenna of this type.

I expected that the final impedance of the antenna would be a typical value for a yagi in the 20 to 30-ohm range. Thus, I set the SWR calculations based on a 25-ohm target impedance. More on the matching of the resulting design later…

Element Optimization Results

It took several runs of the optimizer with different sets of Optimizer Objectives to get the final results I was looking for. The Optimizer tried 130 combinations of element lengths to arrive at the final lengths shown above. Note the improvements in SWR (1.6 -> 1.04), Forward Gain (+1 dB), Front/Back (+4.2 dB), and Front/Rear (actually Front/Side) performance that the Optimizer was able to achieve over my manual trial and error optimization.

Post-Optimization Model Variables

Next, I rounded the optimized element lengths and plugged them into the Variables Tab.

Post Optimization Azimuth Pattern

The image above shows the optimized Azimuth pattern for the antenna as generated by AutoEZ and EZNEC. A very clean result!

Post-Optimization Elevation Pattern

And here’s the optimized Elevation pattern near the center of the SSB sub-band. This antenna is a little low for 40m but the resulting maximum gain at a 35º angle should work well for US contacts during Field Day.

Calculated Performance for the Optimized Antenna

The final step in the optimization process was calculating a full set of performance calculations for the antenna using the Calculate Tab. AutoEZ makes it very easy to generate a set of Test Cases for incremental frequencies in the SSB sub-band on 40m. Note the setting of the Elevation angle of 35º to match the maximum gain angle for the optimized antenna. Also, note the parameter settings for Ground Type and Characteristics. I set these to model the less-than-ideal soil conditions that we have here in New England.

Performance Plots for the Optimized Antenna

AutoEZ provides several nice graphical capabilities via the Patterns, Triple, Smith, Custom, and Currents Tabs. I used some of them to plot the data from the performance calculations. These graphs help to visualize the results of the optimization to verify that the design objectives for the antenna have been met.

1:2 Matching Balun (25 ohms to 50 ohms)

I am using a 1:2 matching Balun from Balun Designs at the feed point of the antenna to transform the antenna’s final 25-ohm feed point impedance to 50-ohms to match our coax feed line.

40m V-Beam Antenna

We are looking forward to using the optimized version of our 40m V-Beam at Field Day 2018. It took me a couple of days of time to read all of the AutoEZ documentation and learn to use the excellent tools it provides. I don’t think I will build another EZNEC antenna model without using AutoEZ. Even without the optimization features, AutoEZ makes the construction and modification of an antenna model in EZNEC far easier than it would be using EZNEC alone. I hope that you’ll give AutoEZ a try for your next antenna design project.

Fred, AB1 OC

GoKit for Field Day and EMCOMM

June 20, 2017 by fkemmerer

Completed VHF/UHF GoKit for EMCOMM and Field Day

Completed VHF/UHF GoKit for Field Day and EMCOMM

We’ve been thinking about building a portable GoKit for VHF/UHF EMCOMM and Field Day Applications for a while now. The following is a list of our requirements for a GoKit –

2m and 70cm operation with FM simplex and repeaters
APRS capability and tactical display for portable coordination
Digital messaging capability
Weather band monitoring capability
AC Power with flexible battery backup options

A plan to build our GoKit came together during our Dayton Hamvention trip this year, and we used it during Field Day.

Kenwood TM-D710GA At Dayton

The heart of any GoKit is the Transceiver. We’ve been using Kenwood equipment for our APRS iGate for some time now, and we have had good results with it. Kenwood’s latest 50W transceiver with APRS is the TM-D710GA. This unit provides full support for APRS tactical applications and now includes a built-in GPS receiver making it ideal for our GoKit application.

AvMap GeoSat 6 APRS Tactical Display

We have been using the Kenwood TM-D710 and an AvMap GeoSat APRS display in our APRS iGate setup, and the combination works very well. The AvMap display lets one see the location of portable and mobile APRS stations on a map display. This arrangement is perfect for coordinating activities in an EMCOMM situation. The AvMap GeoSat 6 APRS display is no longer in production, but I was able to locate a nearly new unit on eBay.

3 - iPortable Enclosure

We had a chance to look at the iPortable enclosure at Dayton and decided that their Pro 2 4U deep unit would be a good choice for our GoKit application. The iPortable enclosures are based on a portable rack mount case and include a DC power system, speaker and headphone hookups, a light, and provisions for a cooling fan.

Radio Shelf

With all the components in hand, we began the construction of our GoKit. Reliability is important in any portable system like this, so we put some time into securely mounting all the equipment and neatly arranging the cabling. First came the shelf containing the Kenwood transceiver and a SignaLink USB sound card. A combination of drilling the shelf to secure gear with large cable ties and #8 stainless hardware was used here.

Coax Connector Cables

Our iPortable case was equipped with SO-239 and N-connectors on the front panel to allow antennas and feed lines that use either connector type. To make the changeover between the connector types easy, we installed separate PL-259 jumper cables for each connector. One simply connects the appropriate jumper to the radio.

Display and Power Shelf

The power and AvMap display shelves were next. The AvMap display mount was dissembled and modified to accept a custom mounting bracket.

PWRgate Battery Interface and Charger

The iPortable enclosure was drilled to mount a West Mountain Radio PWRgate to handle backup battery charging and management. The PWRgate supports instantaneous switching between an AC power supply and a backup battery and can accommodate various battery types and sizes.

Backup Battery

The PWRgate was configured to properly charge our 18AH AGM backup battery. Note using a fuse in series with the battery for safety reasons. We used a Powerwerx SPS-30DM adjustable power supply set to 14.5Vdc to operate our GoKit and to provide proper charging voltage for our AGM battery.

Diamond X-30 EMCOMM and Field Day GoKit Antenna and Mast

Diamond X-30 Antenna and Mast for Field Day and EMCOMM

The last piece of the setup was the antenna. We wanted something that was portable, easy to set up for Field Day, and would provide good performance. We choose a Diamond X-30A 2m/70cm ground plane antenna and mounted it on a 12′ fiberglass push-up mast. The feed line is made from 25′ of LMR-400UF coax. Several bungee cords are used to attach the mast to a fence post or other vertical structure.

10 - GoKit In Use at Field Day and EMCOMM

The picture above shows the completed GoKit in operation. We typically set one side of the Kenwood TM-D710GA as an APRS transceiver and Digipeater and the other to operate on a local repeater or simplex FM. The SignaLink sound card is used with a laptop computer running Fldigi and NBEMS for messaging applications. The iPortable case has a 13.8V lighter socket which connects to a power brick to power our laptop PC.

GoKit Packaged for Transport

The GoKit is quite portable when closed. All of the equipment and cable connections are enclosed and protected by the case’s removable end caps. We’ve tested our GoKit during our club’s weekly repeater net, and it worked great. The first real use of our new GoKit will be at Field Day this year. It will be located in our public information tent and will be used as a “talk-in” system.

Fred, AB1OC

Nashua Area Radio Society’s 2017 Field Day Station Test

June 15, 2017 by fkemmerer

ARRL Field Day is the Nashua Area Radio Society’s largest and most popular annual activity. You can see more about our recent Field Day activities on our Field Day page and our Blog. We recently got together for a Field Day Station Test.

Dave Merchant K1DLM, our Field Day chairman, is bringing 21st-century radio and computer technology to our Field Day setup this year. There are several aspects to this new component of our Field Day plans, including –

Two Flex-6700 Software Define Radios running over a network for our new Digital and enhanced GOTA Stations
An on-site WiFi Network to enable using the N1MM+ Logger in network mode for sharing log information, station activity, real-time scores, and messages
A central Score Board and Field Day Information Computer in our public information tent

2017 Field Day Site – Upper Field Layout

We will again be holding our 2017 Field Day operation at the Hollis-Brookline High School in Hollis, NH. We plan to use the upper baseball field area as our main operating location. We have decided to add a third tower this year and locate it on a soccer practice field several hundred feet from our main operating area. Our antennas and equipment will lie within the required 1000′ circle, but the third tower would situate those operating at that location away from the rest of our group. Dave’s solution to this problem was to set up a network and operate two Software Defined Radios (SDRs) at the lower site remotely from our location on the upper field.

Dave has enlisted Piece Fortin, K1FOP, as our IT Chairman for Field Day this year. Pierce has been instrumental, along with Dave, in the planning and testing of this new technology. Pierce and Dave have a great deal of networking, IT experience, and knowledge, and we could not have put together what is described here without them.

Dave K1DLM, Piece, Hamilton K1HMS, Mike Ryan K1WVO, Anita AB1QB, and I have gotten together multiple times to set up and test this new technology. I wanted to share more about the equipment and the associated testing (staged in the kitchen at our QTH – thank you, Anita!).

We began the testing process by setting up our 20m CW station.

20m CW Station Test

This station uses an Elecraft K3S Transceiver, a K1EL WinKeyer, and the N1MM+ Logger on a Windows 10 Laptop PC. We used this station to get our basic N1MM+ setup, including our Field Day CW keying macros working.

40m SSB Station Test

Next came our 40m SSB station. This setup uses an Icom IC-7300 Transceiver, allowing us to set up and test N1MM+ on the fly audio macro recording and playback. All three SSB stations will have on-the-fly recording and playback capability, allowing each SSB operator to record and use a custom set of audio macros.

Digital Station Test

Next came our Digital Station. This station uses one of the two remote Flex-6700 SDRs.

Remote Flex-6700 SDRs and Antenna Switch

Dave, K1DLM put together a really nice package for the two Flex-6700 SDRs and associated equipment, which will be located on the lower field. He used a rack system to mount the two SDRs, power supplies, a three-band Tri-plexor, a set of bandpass filters for 80m, 40m, 20m, 15m, and 10m, and a 403A 8×2 networked antenna switch. This setup allows either of the two SDRs to share the tri-band yagi or the 40m and 80m Inverted-V antennas on the tower on the lower field and operate on any of the 5 available HF bands. Antenna and filter switching automatically track the frequencies of the two SDRs making the setup simple.

Digital Station Second Display - SmartSDR & More N1MM+

Digital Station Second Display – SmartSDR and N1MM+

The Digital Station’s remote SDR will be operated using a SmartSDR client running on the Digital Station laptop PC. This station will have a second monitor to better accommodate all of the windows associated with it.

Digital Station Main Display – N1MM+

The main display associated with the Digital Station will run decoders for all PSK and RTTY modes. The ability to decode multiple PSK signals simultaneously and multiple RTTY decodes are available. The Digital station also acts as the N1MM+ master station in our Field Day setup for all other stations that use N1MM+.

Satellite Station Test

Our Satellite Station 2.0 was also added to the test setup. It uses a MacBook Air laptop running MacDoppler to control the antenna rotators and the Icom IC-9100 Transceiver, part of our Satellite Station. A Windows 10 Surface Pro computer, which runs N1MM+ and provides logging and other network functionality for our Satellite Station, is included.

GOTA Station Test

We also tested our GOTA station, which uses the second Flex-6700 SDR and a FlexRadio Maestro to provide a more conventional “buttons and knobs” interface for our GOTA operators. This station will also have a laptop PC running N1MM+ for logging.

Scoreboard Computer

We also built and tested a Scoreboard PC. This computer will be in the Public Information tent at Field Day and connected to a large display. It will show our real-time score, QSOs being logged as they are made, and other useful information about our Field Day operations. This computer will also continuously play videos from our Video Collection and provide access to IP video cameras monitoring the tower and equipment on the lower field.

Pierce, K1FOP and Hamilton, K1HMS Testing CW Stations

Our networked N1MM+ testbed contained at least one station of each type (CW, SSB, Digital, Satellite, and GOTA) that will be part of our Field Day setup this year. The Station Masters for the additional CW and SSB stations came by to test their setups using the test bed.

Field Day Networking System

The networking system Dave and Pierce built is central to all the technology described here. All of the gear is mounted in a single rack which will be located on the upper field during Field Day. The setup includes a Firewall/DHCP server, a commercial-grade outdoor WiFi access point, a 4G LTE modem for Internet access, an Ethernet Switch, and a UPS power supply.

MoCA Data Link Cable

The upper and lower fields at our Field Day site are separated by several hundred feet. A thick line of trees between the two locations raised concerns about connecting the upper and lower sites using WiFi. Pierce came up with a great solution to this problem – we will be using MoCA Data Modems and RG6 Quad Shield 75 ohm Coax Cable to provide a 10 Mbps data link between the two sites. We tested the MoCA link using a much longer coax cable run than we needed at Field Day and confirmed the full 10 Mbps throughput.

N1MM+ Talk Window

Our networked N1MM+ setup will allow any station in our setup to send messages to everyone who is operating at Field Day. We can use this capability for important communications like “Lunch is ready!” or “I need help from Pierce (our IT chairman) on the 40m SSB station,” or “The 6m band is wide open!”.

Our GOTA and Digital stations will be together in the same tent and will provide our Field Day 2017 visitors to see and use 21st-century Amateur Radio technology to make contacts. We are expecting young people who participated in our High-Altitude Balloon project and from other local schools where we have done Amateur Radio activities to attend. In addition to being a learning opportunity for all of us in the Nashua Area Radio Society, we hope that the state-of-the-art technology that we are using will generate interest among our visitors. If you are local to the Nashua, NH, USA area, come pay us a visit during 2017 Field Day. We’d enjoy providing you and your family a tour and a chance to Get On The Air. Hope to see you at Field Day!

Fred, AB1OC

Why Ham Radio?

February 20, 2017 by akemmerer1

Fred’s Truck with Antenna

Every so often, I drive Fred’s truck to work and people ask me what that big antenna on the back of the truck is for. I explain to them that it is for Ham Radio. But the reply is usually, why ham radio – isn’t that outdated technology? We have cell phones and IM, etc…what do we need Ham Radio for? So I thought I would put down my thoughts as a relatively new Ham about why I enjoy spending so much of my time with Ham Radio.

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Amateur Radio for Public Service

Public Service

The number one reason we still need Ham Radio along with all the other technology we now have is for public service. When there is a disaster and cell phones, television, etc are all not working, Ham Radio operators provide the critical communication.

Ham Radio operators help locally to keep hospitals and first responders in contact with each other to help those affected by the disaster.

Hams also use our ability to communicate around the world on HF bands to help family members around the world to get in touch with loved ones affected by a disaster.

Ham Radio operators have been on the scene helping in every disaster from the earthquakes in Nepal to the recent flooding in California.

Amateur Radio Cube Satellites

Technology and the Maker Movement

I only became a Ham 5 years ago but many of my fellow Ham Radio operators got their license when they were in their early teens and used what they learned to launch their careers. Many have had very successful careers in STEM fields, all launched by their interest in Ham Radio at a young age. As technology advances, so does the technology used in our hobby. We even have a nobel laureate, Joe Taylor K1JT who is a ham. Joe has developed weak signal digital communication modes that let us communicate by bouncing signals off the moon!

As technology has advanced, so has the use of it in Ham Radio. Most Ham Radio operators have one or more computers in their shack. Many also have a software designed radio (SDR), where much of the radio functionality is implemented using Software, we use sound cards to run digital modes, which are a lot like texting over the radio, and we use the internet extensively as part of operating. We can also make contacts through satellites orbiting the earth and even the International Space Station.

Most hams love do-it-yourself technical projects, including building a station, home brewing an antenna, building a radio or other station component. In my day job, I am a program manager for software development projects, but its been a while since I have built anything. As a Ham I taught myself how to code in Python and about the Raspberry Pi and I built the DX Alarm Clock.

QSL Card from VK6LC in Western Australia

International Camaraderie

One of the coolest things about being an amateur radio operator is that you can communicate with other hams all over the world. Ham Radio is an international community where we all have something in common to talk about – our stations and why we enjoy ham radio. The QSL card above is from a memorable QSO with Mal, VK6LC, from Western Australia, who was the last contact that I needed for a Worked All Zones award. I must have talked to him for 1/2 hour about his town in Australia and his pet kangaroos!

Amateur Radio Map of the World

Geography Lesson

I have learned much about geography from being on the air and trying to contact as many countries as I can. There are 339 DX Entities, which are countries or other geographical entities and I have learned where each one is in order to understand where propagation will allow me make a contact. I have learned a great deal about world geography. Through exchanging QSL cards often get to see photos from so many areas of the world.

DXCC Challenge Award Plaque

Achievement – DXing and Contesting

DXing and Contesting provide a sense of achievement and exciting opportunity for competition. Many Hams work toward operating awards. You can get an operating award for contacting all 50 states, contacting 100 or more countries, contacting Islands, cities in Japan, countries in Asia, or anything else you can imagine. Each of these operating awards provides a sense of accomplishment and helps to build skills. Contesting builds skills through competition among Hams to see who can make the most contacts with the most places in 24 or 48 hours. Contesting also improves our operating skills and teaches us to copy callsigns and additional data accurately.

Teaching a License Class

Teaching Licensing Classes – Passing it On

Recently I have joined a team of club members who teach license classes to others who want to get licensed or upgrade their existing Amateur Radio licenses. Teaching provides a way to improve my presentation skills and also helps me to really understand the material that we teach about Amateur Radio. It is always a thrill at the end of the class to see so many people earn their licenses or upgrades.

There are so many interesting aspects of Ham Radio which is what makes is such a great hobby. Getting your license can open up a world of possibilities. Upgrading to a new license class provides more opportunities to communicate over longer distances. Ham Radio clubs, including our local club, the Nashua Area Radio Club, provide many resources to help you get your first license, upgrade to a new license class and learn about the many aspects of our hobby.

Anita, AB1QB

2016 ARRL Field Day!

July 8, 2016 by fkemmerer

2016 Field Day Site Layout

I had the privilege of acting as the Field Day Incident Commander for the Nashua Area Radio Club this year. Field Day is the most important operating event for the Nashua Area Radio Club each year. We operated under our club callsign, N1FD and we were 7A here in New Hampshire, USA. We included some new antennas including a Three Element 40m V-Beam, a Satellite Station, and a 70cm Digital ATV Station in our operation this year. You can see some of the details which went into the planning of our 2016 Operation on our Club’s Tech Night Page.

The video above shows highlights from our 2016 Operation. As you can see, we had a lot of fun this year. Our club has 120+ members and we had a large turnout for Field Day. You can see more about our 2016 Field Day operation on our Field Day Page including photos, a score summary, and a recap presentation shared at a recent club meeting. I hope that you enjoy sharing our memories.

73,

– Fred, AB1OC

2015 Nashua Area Radio Club Field Day Recap

August 21, 2015 by fkemmerer

We had the opportunity to be part of the Nashua Area Radio Club’s 2015 Field Day Operation. Ed, K2TE was our incident commander and he helped to club to put together a great Field Day Operation. We operated under our club callsign, N1FD as 8A. John, W1MBG put together the video above which is a really nice recap of our operation.

Field Day Tower and Beams

The club was very active in WRTC 2014 and, as a result, was able to purchase several of the tower and station kits from the WRTC operation. The heart of our Field Day antenna system was built around two of these towers. One was used for CW and 6m and the other was used for SSB. Both towers had tri-band beams and we used Triplexers and Filters to allow our stations on 20m, 15m and 10m to share the beams on each tower. The towers got us a long way towards our status as an 8A operation.

Wire Antenna Construction

My role in the setup part of our Field Day operation was to build our wire antennas. We began with a class covering how to build and tune Delta Loop antennas and we used the newly gained information from our class to build 40m and 80m delta loops at our Field Day site. We also put up a 75m inverted-V antenna in one of the tall trees at our site.

Operating Tents

We made good use of our WRTC station kits and other gear that our members brought to setup comfortable tents to operate from as well as a public information tent and a food tent.

Some Of Our Operators For The Nashua Area Radio Club

Despite the rainy weather on Saturday evening and Sunday, we all stayed comfortable and dry. Shown above is Dave, N1RF, Mike, K1WVO and Mike, K1HIF in our 40m SSB tent.

Field Day 20m SSB Station

John, W1MBG and I shared a tent which we used for both 10m and 20m SSB operations. The picture above shows our 20m station which was built around an Elecraft KX3 with a PX3 Panadapter and 100w outboard amplifier.

Mikayla Operating With Her Dad During Field Day

Our club has been doing a great deal of work on bringing young people and other new HAMs into the hobby via license classes, outreach to schools and other activities. We carried this work into our Field Day operations with a GOTA station and lots of opportunities for new HAMs and young people to get on the air. Shown above is Wayne, AA9DY helping his daughter Mikayla to make some contacts on 20m SSB phone.

Field Day Feast

Anita, AB1QB made great meals and snacks during our Field Day operation. The food provided us a great opportunity to take a break from operating and enjoy each other’s company. Anita and John, W1SMN organized our public information and outreach activities which were very successful. we had over 30 visitors from the general public during our operation this year.

We all had a great time during Field Day this year, and we’re looking forward to doing it again next year.

– Fred, AB1OC

2015 Field Day Station Test

June 22, 2015 by fkemmerer

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

2013 Field Day

August 1, 2013 by fkemmerer

CW Station Operations

Our club, PART of Westford, MA USA, held our 2013 Field Day event at the Concord Rod & Gun Club again this year. We operated three HF Stations (SSB Phone, CW, and Digital) as well as a VHF and a Satellite Station this year. All of our operations were QRP 5 watts and used solar/battery power. The photo above shows Bob (W1IS) and Bill (AA1O) operating the CW station. Our day began with the setup of our antennas and the four stations.

Field Day Tri-Bander

Anita (AB1QB) and I handled the HF beam antennas for our Field Day Operation. This included a Hy-Gain TH-3JRS Tri-Bander loaned to the club by Allison (KB1GMX) which was installed 20 ft up on a guyed military push-up mast.

15m Buddi-Beam

We also brought our 15m and 10m 3 element budi-beam mono band yagis which we designed for portable operations. These antennas plus a G5RV and a 40m wire beam made up our HF antenna farm for Field Day. All of these antennas were brought to a common interconnect panel where they could be connected to any of the three HF stations. We setup all of these antennas at home the week before to confirm that they worked as expected and to ensure that they could be erected safely and quickly at our Field Day site.

VHF Tower

Another part of our team spent time to put up a Rohn 25G tower for our VHF Station. Allison, (KB1GMX) led this effort and supplied yagis for 6m and 2m. Operating on these bands QRP 5 watts is quite challenging and Allison was able to make a fair number of contacts by utilizing her considerable VHF operating experience.

Digital Station Battery Power

With the antennas up, we turned our attention to the setup of the digital station and its associated battery and solar power. The digital station is the most challenging in terms of off-grid power because we need to power both the Transceiver and a Personal Computer as the latter is integral to generating and decoding digital mode signals over the air. The power system for the digital station consisted of two 65 Ah dry cell deep cycle batteries and a solar charging system. The batteries were sized to allow operation of the digital station for the full field day period of 24 hours in the event that we had limited sunshine due to clouds or rain.

Solar Panels

The battery system used SunSaver MPPT charging system setup in a 30 Vdc configuration along with two PowerFilm 90W folding portable solar panels wired in series. We had good sunlight during the daytime and the solar panels were able to keep our batteries fully charged. The CW and SSB phone station used a few sets of smaller batteries and a solar panel to recharge them.

SSB Phone Station Operations

All three of our HF stations used Elecraft KX3 Transceivers. The KX3s turned out to be an excellent choice for our Field Day operations as they have low power consumption, a good receiver and provide excellent usability and external interfacing capabilities for automated logging, CW and digital operation. The photo above shows Scott (NE1RD) and Lyman (W1LKS) operating the SSB phone station. We used PCs on all three station to automate logging. We used Andy’s (KB1OIQ) xlog logger for the Phone and CW stations and the N1MM logger for the Digital Station.

Digital Station Equipment

Anita and I were the coordinators for the Digital Station and we decided to update the configuration of the digital station this year. In addition to the Elecraft KX3, we used a Windows 8 PC running N1MM/MMTTY/2Tone/FLdigi to handle the logging and digital mode processing.

Digital Station Software – RTTY Mode

N1MM provided a more contest-oriented logging setup as well as the ability to run multiple digital decoders to give us the best possible chance of receiving digital transmissions without error. For RTTY signals, we used a combination of the MMTTY and 2Tone encoder/decoders. For PSK signals, we used FLdigi. After some initial tuning, we got good results with this combination of software.

Satellite Station

Bob (KB1SWZ) put together a very competent Satellite station to complete our Field Day setup. Working LEO birds QRP 5 watts on Field Day provided to be quite a challenge as its hard to compete with the many higher power stations contending for the birds on Field Day.

Toolbox Talk

With all of the stations setup and ready to go, we provided a series of “Toolbox Talks” to help members of our club understand our field day stations and how to use them. Shown above is Scott (NE1RD) explain how to use the Elecraft KX3 which was central to all three of our HF stations.

Digital Station Operations

One of the best parts of Field Day is that it provides the opportunity to spend time with newer operators and young people to introduce them to many aspects of Amateur Radio and to provide them with opportunities to get on the air and try new things. Shown above is Fred (AB1OC) explaining the operation of the Digital Station.

Field Day Feast

We are fortunate to have our club sponsor a nice meal as part of our Field Day event. Charlie (W1ADL) and Rick (W1RAG) did a great job with food for our event this year. In addition to a great meal, this provides all of the club members participating in our Field Day event a chance to socialize and have fun.

We operated for the full 24 hour period again this year and managed to make a good number of contacts with our QRP setups. The totals for our effort were 722 QSOs (up from 587 in 2012) with a final score (including bonus points) of 7,355. A special thanks to everyone who contributed to or was part of making our 2013 Field Day event a success. We also very much appreciate Joe’s (KB1SSA) efforts to help us secure the excellent facilities at the Concord Rod and Gun Club for our Field Day event.

– Fred (AB1OC)

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