15 has been totally dead here. Absolutely nothing.  But 20m is starting to pick up some, now.

Hm, alot of them could be old/aging. Which models? I get decent enough reports on the air, but remember its military/comm quality not "Hamster" quality audio. So it should be loud and punchy.

I also have a desktop TW100, that got fucked with by the previous neckbeard owner, now it transmits 80W (vs spec 125), ostentibly not to stress it. But he did a full alignment and its off by 200khz on TX/RX. He sure "tuned it up"... Apparently  Jackwagons middle eastern retarded radio repair school opened up an office here in the states....

Greenies strugglin a bit to make contacts

PRC2200
Now with a mysterious BITE error, but seems to work... (and mysteriously photobucket won't rotate my pics again)



And the trusty old PITA 132, which at least is putin out the watts...



Also, WTF is wrong with PSK31 users? Reply to call, and they go away. Or call CQ for 10 minutes and mysteriously vanish? I know I'm charming at all but seriously? This is why I hate digimodes. PS not me, I did manage to make a dozen or so contacts, but I got seriously frustrated by that behavior with huge alligator like signals.

Anyhow, I have an event to attend but might be back on 20/40 later.

So no surprises there...

So I'm a little surprised, there were too many stations on 20 to work, shittons of QRM of everyone trying to talk over each other. I literally heard multiple freqs with 2 or 3 different stations calling CQ that apparently couldn't hear the other 2 stations on the same frequency. I made a few dozen  contacts on SSB and and later PSK31 (which was a shitshow as expected)

40 was mostly dead, but I expected that for the time of day, but I did make 2 QSO on it anyway to some decently strong stations in the south.

It picked up a lot over the past couple of hours.  I'm pretty pleased with the number of stations I bagged on 20m.  

Going to put up the 40m antenna for a little while tonight, and see how it goes.

Yep, it's field day. Not as impressive as years past. Lack of sunspots taking it's toll...

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I  intend to operate aeronautical mobile tomorrow on 20m; conditions and work concerns permitting.  200 watts from a 767.

What station class is that?

I will be doing some HF aero mobile on Tuesday. I have been doing 2m FM and a little SSB. This will be my first try at HF.

Sitting in the basement handing out points from batteries -- they needed a workout anyway, I don't get on much anymore...

Hey HomeSlice!  I still have great memories when I visited you for FD several years ago.   Hope all is well with you and yours!  
BD

That was a good time, I was talking to Mrs. Slice about it earlier today.  We're well, hope the same for you and yours.

About a bird of my QSOs have been on 15. It was open for a few hours for me.

1C, unless I'm mistaken.  On my way to the airport now...

Good luck!

Worked about 10 stations on 20m pretty quickly, this morning.  Seems like less noise now that the storms have cleared out a little more. And I finally got one on 15m.



Edit:  The K2 rocks on battery power.  When I started, the battery was at 13.0V.  After 10 hours of operating, it's still at 12.8V.  

Ooh, you should write a review, I've been really considering getting a K2 for a while...

And yes I nearly doubled my log this morning with way less effort running 20-50W manpacks this morning on 20 and 40 this morning. I'm too lazy to reconfigure the dipoles so no other bands...

6m is hopping today for field day.  Best opening on field day I can remember.

Today was better than yesterday, log wise.  
Some AAR observations.

First off the Yaesu FT-817 has a real fine receiver.  Much better than my Icom IC-7000.  Or even my ht on 2 meters using aftrmarket antenna on the ht, and supplied rubber duck antenna with the 817. I thought the ht would blow the older 817 out of the water on this. Not even close. I was hearing a distant repeater with the 817 and dialed my ID-51 and it wasnt hearing the traffic.  

Second, I started this morning on the 817. I tried, but no contacts made after an hour.   Switched to the 7000 and dialed down the power to about 25% and thats what i needed.  I made contacts on 10m, and 20m.   Easily surpassed yesterdays totals in an hour.  :) so lession learned. QRP is fun, but not to play on field day with all the others out there. I'm going to look into a smallish amp for the 817.  Might go with what Greg runs on his KX3. By my estimation 25% power on the 7000 is about 20-25 watts to the antenna. Other stations seamed to like it when i said i was running 1B.

Third. My latest purchase of the 15ah LiFePo4 battery was a great choice.
The 817 sips power. I ran all yestrday afternoon and used just over 1ah, so say one and a half amp hour.
The 7000 dialed down drinks the amp hours. In the hour or so I ran today used another 1ah. So i used less then 3ah all throughout field day!   Granted I didnt run for most of it. The skeeters chased me off last night after sunset and the wind died down.
I'm confident that I could run at least 24 hours with the 817 and a small amp, or several days with just the 817. With the 7000 I should be able to run all day, but it draws 1.27a just on receive. Drop the 1 off that for the 817 on receive.
The powerwerx watt meter and power analyzer is a nice thing to have when running on battery. A quick glance told me on what i was using real time and what has been used.

Fourth. My alpha back pack vertical is a sweet portable antenna.  On its tripod, setup time was less than 5 minutes. Its not as small as an end fed, but its a self contained setup.

Fif. This was a fantastic weekend for field day. The weather was fantastic. High yesterday was about 80. Today I think is about the same. This is a far cry from years past where hot was the temp of the day, and thunderstorms at night.

Sixth. Band conditions were not great, but it's amazing what a bunch of people on the air will do for improving contacts. Yesterday afternoon it seemed like everyone was stuffed into 20m. Today was much better.

Ive got a couple picts on the phone and may edit them in later after i get home..

73.

My K2 draws about 240ma on receive, but I could lower that somewhat by turning off the backlighting on the display, turning the S-meter off (or to one bar only), and using headphones. But I don't bother to change those settings.  I didn't look during this Field Day, but as I recall, transmitting at 5w on CW draws about 1.5 amps.  

I'm using a 55 AH Elite battery, from Gruber Power, which is my  backup power source for my home station.  It normally sits out in the garage, and gets charged couple of times each month, with a Battery Tender.  I have a solar panel for charging, if necessary.

Yup the 817 is a pretty decent radio. Its even better with the optional filters and BHI dsp (better than the Yaesu DSP found on the 897/857).
And yeah 5W in a contest on a portable vertical isn't the best way to go, but it sounds like you got heard.
And yes the bands this morning were great.

2nd Day AAR,

Well, I easily more than doubled my contact log running not quite QRP (mainly ~20W for the milpacks).
Also, operating hollywood shootout style (you know, the guy that keeps pulling out guns when he runs dry) is actually a decent amount of fun. I haven't had this many packsets on the air in a long time. Only made a few contacts on each before switching em out, so battery life was never an issue.

The sunday morning greenie crew: PRC2000, PRC515, PRC319, Syncal 30


And a very special honerable mention to this old soldier, that sadly half broke the power/tune switch (which will be the worlds biggest bitch to fix). He made the last commo shot of the day into North Dakota of all random places, the OP there was dumbfounded when I told him what it was.

The PRC-74B with his blazing 10-15w of SSB power... A bit larger and heavier than a KX3, but a wee bit cooler.


So lots of fun aside from the wounded packsets...

So size and weight wise how is it Elecraft sorta sucks on posting accurate weights of stuff (they list the base weight but not what it weighs with the ATU etc), and what sort of life do you get on the internal battery?

I've  never weighed it, and I don't have the internal battery.  I think of the K2 as "pickup truck portable", because it is a little too bulky for backpacking. I suspect you might think it's too fragile, too.  I love my K2, but I really bought it because I wanted to build the kit, and not so much because I wanted a portable radio.  It does make a good backup rig for the shack, though. And because of the low current drain, it's an ideal radio to use on battery power, in case the main power goes out.  I was operating as 1E (home station on emergency power) for field day.

Honestly, if I wanted something truly portable, I would get the KX3, or KX2.

Ah sorry, my bad, I thought you had the KX2 not the K2...

Had about a hour or so of sleep since yesterday. I usually pull the all nigher for field day and this was no exception. Most of the bands went dead by 5AM eastern with the exception of stations that could not hear us or we had already worked. Showed up at noon on Saturday at the EOC to a couple of broken antennas that nobody knew were broken or how it happened and the network for logging being a total wreck. Luckily enough I had my spare router with me and set up a network and repaired the antennas and we were back in business. Contacts did not really get going until almost 5PM due to sorting out rigs and getting everybody up to speed on how to log and the procedure for contacts was.

Things for next year. Have the EOC manager check and test the antennas before field day next year and since being spoiled with my IC-7100 I loathe using the 7200. Nothing like sorting out why the radio will not transmit due to the fact someone spun the dial out of band and no matter what was tried the radio would not transmit....

I worked 137 stations yesterday, all but a handful on cw. Today I only operated for a little over an hour but got about 40 more. All on 5 watts.. through a 5el beam

Got a lot on 40m with a dipole last night. 20 stayed open surprisingly late.

I worked well over 100 on SSB, and some more on digital... No CW, since I'm out of practice.

Yeah, thats basically cheating, makes 5W into what ~40W? I assume that wasn't a "portable 5el beam?" (PS I'm just jealous)

I was surprised how late 20 sayed open on sat, but I rarely get on in the evenings these days.

The bands are often open, but don't seem so because no one is on. 15 was dead quiet until 1600Z yesterday, then the flood gates suddenly opened.

I got on 15, 20, and 40 yesterday and today and made 80 contacts running 50 QW watts into my trap/fan dipole. Good signals all the way around. I have a cold and my ears are stopped up, so didn't stay on for any appreciable length of time.

Yup this... People don't get on unless there are other people to talk to. These days its up/down depending on the day, but most everyone (including myself) doesn't bother since they think everything is closed...

Aside from the TW100F I used in the begiing of saturday, most of my contacts were in the 20-50W range. No real problems, aside from breaking radios ...

That sounds like a shitshow, I'm shocked you were the only competent person there, i.e. knew how to test antennas, and make sure radios worked...

The weather was so nice this weekend that I decided to setup a station in the back yard today on a whim just using a bunch of stuff laying around the house and garage.

Three 15W  and one 5W Northern Tool solar panels into a Northern Tool charge controller, connected to a 5 year old Diehard marine / RV battery.

Kenwood TS-590S on a table under a shade tree.

70' of RG-8 to a PL-259 to binding post adapter with 16.5 feet of wire on each side hoisted to some tree limbs about 20' high on one end and 12' high on the other end.

Started operating 20 meter SSB just after 1800 UTC today and worked 6 stations in a little over an hour and that was it.  No more new SSB stations heard and I was bored of operating anyways.  Only did SSB because my friend stopped by and he doesn't do CW.  

100W on battery power and I was transmitting so little that the solar cells were able to keep up with recharging the old battery.

I always knew I could get on the air with a pile of parts and I got to have fun proving it today in some really nice weather.  Low 70's with no humidity!

Came inside after tearing everything down and checked on the home station expecting to hear a lot more stations.  Nope, that low dipole outside was doing great, just not many people on 20 SSB that late on Field Day.  Then I also remembered that I was going to take pictures outside and completely forgot.

ETA:  Low quality security camera pic crop of the operating position.  

Chuck on the left and me on the right with battery and charge controller further right.  Antenna and solar panels out of view.

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Depends on what you mean by portable. We fabricated a folding tower base on a trailer. 3 Rohn sections, a rotor, 10 foot mast, a winch, and a bunch of ropes. Also had 40 and 80m dipoles, a few inverted vees and a lot of hardline.

Yesterday afternoon 10m was dead but I could hear a ton of beacons

Like KCC, I had a very similar backyard FD with an old dipole antenna and match box I built several years ago.  Didn't operate much because it was our daughter's birthday Saturday, but had a fun time on the radio, too.
I stayed on 20 and 40m JT65 and JT9 using the KX3 at 5w the whole time.
Weather could not have been better.  

Looks great, and good to see you around again!

I had all sorts of impromptu antenna options and I went with the quickest and easiest since I waited so long to do anything with Field Day this year, and it worked out well.

Probably my most fun Field Day ever except for maybe my first one when I was a teen and did the night shift with a different friend for the club station back around 1980.

My day before field day was spent on the phone with Elecraft tech support trying to figure out why my ATU wouldn't tune any of my 5 antennae better than 25:1.

We determined that the radio is fuxxored and headed back to Elecraft on Monday.

This sucks.Sorry you missed the Field day. Hope it's an easy fix and you don't need a whole new board.

Here's our crazy tower

Yeah, not my definition of portable. My definion is what fits in a pack or briefcase and can be carried a decent distance by one man if need be. My definition of a portable antenna is again, man walkabke/set up-able.

That being said, im gald folks like you are running beams and decent amounts of power, otherwise it would be a lot less fun for guys like me.

That suxxors....

How tall is it? And what bands for the yagi?

Well, everything except the tower and beam would fit in a back pack. I brought 3 of the stations and everything fit in a medium sized plastic tote.

Honestly there are positives and negatives to using a beam. Yeah, the ERP is closer to ~40w, but since it's highly directional, you can often hear stations off the back or sides who will never be able to hear you unless you spin the beam. I got pretty good at hunting stations in (just using the S-meter). One of the other ops was trying to work a station for 15 minutes and I told him to swing the beam around. He didn't and got frustrated and turned the station over to me. I swung it around and worked him on the first try

The beam went farther and was easier to bust pileups, but even with the dipoles I rarely had a hard time getting through on 40 or 80. It would have been nice to have a 20 meter wire on a switch so I could a/b the beam.

Bottom and middle sections are 10 feet each, top section is around 7 (has a thrust bearing and rotator plate), with 10 foot mast sticking out the top. Floor of the trailer is ~2 feet off the ground. So the beam was roughly 30 feet up.

That Mosley covers 10-12-15-17-20. We thought about leaving off the 12 and 17 meter elements when assembling it, but weren't sure if that would detune the other elements and didn't want to have to raise it multiple times.

That's essentially what I run at my home station for those bands.  

Great for Field Day, the local club here runs a tribander on a crank-up tower trailer supplied by the county or state, can't remember which right now.

My son got his Tech and General this year, and I had never been to a field day, so we both went to the local club's station.  There was an ulterior motive - my son turns 15 this week and I needed to get him out of the house while my wife and daughter decorated for a surprise birthday party!

The club borrowed a 70 foot bucket truck that belonged to a local tree trimming business.  It worked great for hanging inverted V dipoles!  20M was booming in on Saturday.  I worked the club 20M station for 30 minutes and my son worked it for another half hour.  I had plenty of QSOs and even worked an aeromobile station over Cuba that was coming in S9+20!

We both had a great time, but had to leave way too early to get home for the party.  Next year, we'll be spending more time there!

All these radio and antenna pictures but we're still missing pics of one of the best parts--the food!

Took some breaks away from TBK (the big knob) to smoke up a half dozen racks of ribs:
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The Saturday spread:
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Of course breakfast was the most important meal of the day so let's go with some chorizo, eggs, potatoes, and peppers and stuff them into a tortilla drizzled with some siracha:
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(Sunday breakfast was bacon, eggs, and some tasty French toast courtesy Trucker Bob but sadly no picture)

This guy showed up at our site a few times. Maybe next year he'll be the guest of honor for Field Day dinner?
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Had a lot of fun, but FD was  miserable failure for me as an operator.
The club wanted to stay as a 2A so I had to share the antenna with the CW op and he was doing pretty good making QSO's, so about the only time I had the antenna was when he took a break.
I didn't have my rig set up properly for PSK31, didn't have the macros done and had a few other issues.
I mad ea few QSO's as me on JT65 but when switching over to PSK31, my rig would not switch over to transmit. a few setting later and I made a QSO, even tho the macros were not 100% correct. So I give the other Op a salute for hanging with me on that one.

Now that I am home.......and once I get my G5RV restrung, it's going to be PSK31 for a few months to get comfortable doing that.
I learned a lot, and switching modes can not be as simple as I thought it would be.

For next year, I have already put a bug in a few peoples ear that we should go for a 3A station, Phone, CW, Digital and our GOTA.
Also, we set up antennas on Saturday AM, we are looking at putting up the antennas on Friday evening.

Weather was generally good, setting up antennas in the rain but then it cleared of rain until after we had cleared the site.
It went down to about 50 at night, but we were in a little valley next to river so once the night air set in, it was very damp.

We are not 100% sure if we will use the same site, that depends on the owner of the land, and how they perceive our treatment of their property.

Let there be no doubt - BroncoGlenn can smoke some ribs!  They were awesome!  I had a great time eating - and playing some radio - as part of this 3A entry in northwestern AZ.