After a couple of months planning six hearty souls headed up to the woolshed in Greenwood Reserve, Mt Pleasant for the club’s annual field day contest.
We’d decided to cover the same bands as last year namely 6M, 2M & 70cm with the possibility of 23cm added on the Sunday. One of the team pointed out the advantage of doing 2m qrp for the extra bonus points so after consulting with the SOTA guys we decided to use 146.500 FM with any activator having priority on the frequency if needed. This had the advantage of giving new hams the experience of working a contest station for the first time in a relaxed environment & quite a few took the opportunity. A couple of operators even called up whilst driving north to Kaikoura. Hey,thanks guys. Much appreciated.
For the antennas we used Yagis, the 6M 4 element was one of the over twenty that were built in the recent Idris Rd project. We had a 10 element for 2M ssb & Alan (ZL3UYJ) again supplied his 70cm beam. For the 2M qrp we used a slim jim up a SOTA mast, & all antennas were home brew.
Radios used were two Yaesu FT 197’s & a Yaesu FT-270 hand held. The first thing to do was to assemble the antennas, the 6 meter one being tweaked on the analyser for 50.152 MHz & the others were already pretuned. Up they all went with guy ropes & bungee cords & the Armstrong rotators. (For those that don’t know the beams were turned by hand. A strong arm is needed hence it being called Armstrong rotators).
After the respective coax cables were connected it was time to start up the generator for power. Err it’s time to start the generator. Uhmm could somebody start the generator?? Please?? Short story. The generator wouldn’t start!!! After some choice words the generator still wouldn’t play ball.
We made a couple of panic phone calls and the cavalry arrived over the hill in the form of Geoff, ZL3PX. With about 15 minutes to spare we had power. Thanks Geoff.
The club president owes you a beer. Mother Nature tried her best to dampen our enthusiasm on Saturday night with rain, hail, lightning & thunder but we were kept nice & dry in the AREC Civilian which they lent us for the weekend. Thanks Steve & the guys from the team.
Sunday’s weather was perfect. Band conditions were ok within the South Island with contacts being made down to Timaru & Dunedin on all ssb frequencies. We could hear very faintly the North Island operators but it was very hard work to complete the qso’s. Unfortunately we couldn’t repeat last year’s effort with 6M contacts into Australia. What really helped was using qrp for the locals on FM with over 40 contacts made by the contest’s end. On Sunday Greg, ZL3IX fired up his 23cm rig further round the Summit Road using the ZL3AC callsign & he certainly added to our tally. Well done Greg (ZL3IX) & thanks.
Points Claimed:
50MHz: 107 (43 Contacts)
144MHz: 379 (113 Contacts 46 of which were qrp)
432MHz: 178 (51 Contacts)
1296MHz: 577 (32 Contacts)
Total: 1241 points
All in all a great weekend. Each time we all learn something new on how to improve & it definitely proved true this year. The next field day contest for the club is the Jock White which is the last weekend February & the committee are planning a little bit extra this time not just for hams but for the families as well.
Operators: Alan (Zl3UYJ), Wayne (ZL2AYB), Rick (ZL3RIK), Greg (ZL3IX), Ian (ZL3TAO) Baden (ZL3VI) and Alan (ZL3TJE).
Author Rick ZL3RIK photo’s by Ian ZL3TAO and others.
