Gail Bates (MD House of Delegates) & John Pinkston	Adding Diesel Fuel to the Generator	Doug watching Mark operating
Table with Primetec controller & Yaesu Az-El controller	Chris & Mark Cather with Jocelyn & Ryan	James Robey (County Executive) & Rol Anders
Early in Info Tent setup	Our Official Sign	View of our tent from the antenna tower
Mark & Art checking the power	Art & Mark at the operating table	Al Brown & Jim Cross (ARRL Section Officials) with Mark
Jon Wilson	Muddy water on the plastic floor after the thunderstorm	More water inside the tent entrance
Operating station with 3 computers	Operating station	Ed, Art & Mark

Report by Ed N2EC

This was the year of the big thunderstorm. Last year the HF stations were in an air-conditioned tent. This year the word was that there would be more operating space because there would be two tents. By Friday morning there was extensive publicity in the media of the big storms that were coming. We asked the “W3AO General Discussion List” early Friday morning for permission to have Carasat setup in the tents and within an hour or so it was granted.

When we arrived at the tents at about 5 pm we were able to start setting up the equipment in the second tent. We put up our antenna support stand and then raised the two antennas (2 meters and 440) up about 20 feet from the ground so that it was above the one story buildings around the adjacent school.

The diesel generators were not turned on, so we did not stay Friday night to practice with the satellite station.

Mark and Ed arrived Saturday morning at 7:30 am to set up the equipment to try to work satellites coming over before Field Day began at 2 pm.

The first pass was FO-29 at about 8:20 am. We heard someone, but not strong enough to make out what they were saying. Echo was up at 8:50 am. However we discovered a problem. The Cara Yaesu FT-847 receiver when in SAT mode was not transmitting when the PTT button was pushed. Fortunately, Mark had brought his Yaesu FT-847 and he was able to put it into operation. No contacts were made on Echo.

AO-7 was up at 9:22 in mode B that we can work. We heard some stations, but we were not able to work them. Finally at 10:25 Echo came over again and we heard many stations. At 10:34 Art was able to work WA4EWV in grid square EM 70. The AO-7 pass shortly after 11 am was in mode A and thus we could not work it. The reason is that mode A uses a 10 meter downlink signal and we did not have an antenna for 10 meters.  Hamsat (VO-52) came over at 11:27 am and at 11:33 we worked VE9QRP in FN75. At about 1 pm Hamsat came over and we heard some stations, but we could not work any. At about 1:13 pm we switched to SO-50 and at 1:15 we worked AB2UI in FN21.

 When Field Day began at 2 pm  we tried SO-50 at about 2:46 pm, but could not make a contact. At 3:11 FO-29 was over, but we could not hear anything because there was too much interference.

The big excitement for the day was about 4:22 pm when thunder was heard. We disconnected the antennas from the radio and some went to their cars to safely wait out the thunder and lightening storm.  Just prior to 5 pm FO-29 was overhead, but nobody seemed to be on the bird. We could hear ourselves, but no one was around to reply so we could make a contact.

After coming back from the storm we discover that our Primetec rotator controller was not operating properly and the USB port had been taken out. We tried sending a signal to restart, but we were not successful. We had to operate the rest of Field Day by having Mark continuously change the reading on the Yaesu az-el rotator to match the values from his tracking program.

At 6:25 AO-7 came over, but we did not hear ourselves. We concluded that it was not in mode B. Amsat has a log of contacts made on AO-7. Go to http://www.planetemily.com/ao7/main.php and click on “View the Log” to see the passes and whether they are in Mode A or B.

So we switched over to FO-29 and made our first two “official” contacts for Field Day as set forth in the Table below.

At 8 pm Echo came over, but we made no contacts on this FM bird. Then came AO-7 at about 8:13 pm and we heard ourselves proving that it was in mode B. We then made two contacts on this bird as set forth it the Table below.

The International Space Station (ISS) came over at 8:54. The astronauts were asleep and so they have the radio configured as a cross band repeater. They requested operators to use low power (10 watts or less) to connect. We had radio problems in this new configuration and we were not able to make a contact.

The Echo pass beginning at 9:36 pm looked great. The bird would have a high max elevation. Unfortunately it went over the central US so that its “footprint” of areas that could work it included almost the entire US. We did not hear anything. We concluded that everyone was trying to contact it and so all the incoming signals overwhelmed the bird and it could not send any single signal back down.

The final pass for us for Saturday evening was Hamsat at 11:19 pm. Art initially had some problems in hearing his signal on the bird, but at 10:30 pm we made a contact with W9L0 in Wisconsin. That gave us 5 contacts for the first day.

On Sunday morning we returned. We were not able to make any contacts on the Echo pass at 9:45 am. We did note that our output power on this FM bird was only 20 watts. AO-7 came next at 10:08 am with a high elevation. However, it was in mode A and thus we could not work it. There was a Hamsat pass at the same time, but it was only a 6 degree elevation and thus we did not work it.

 For the Echo pass at 11:24 am we heard some stations, but we were not able to make any contacts. The Hamsat pass at 11:43 am had a problem in that the generator we were using ran out of diesel fuel. We had to find a nearby drop off plug from the other generator to get back on the air. No contacts were made.

 The AO-7 pass at 12:02 pm we did not hearing anything. We later found from the AO-7 Log that it was in mode A and thus we could not work it. At the same time there was an SO-50 pass, but it’s maximum elevation was only 3 degrees. So again no contact.

 The Hamsat pass at 1:20 pm was only a 10 degree elevation in its path for us. However, the footprint for the bird showed that it was workable from the entire U.S. We did not hear anything on the bird - -  we suspect because everyone was sending signals to it.

Finally the last pass for Field Day was SO-50 at 1:36 pm. It came up from the south and we heard Florida stations working it. By 1:43 pm it was up in our part of the U.S. and we were able at 1:44 pm to work W0MA in Missouri and then at 1:45 pm we worked VE3LCA in Ontario Canada.

Mark Cather of the Carasat group also provided Field Day wireless networking in the form of a 2.4GHz Wifi network service from his laptop to three machines in the blue tent.  When the storms were coming Saturday afternoon, Mark was on a weather radar page so we could tell with certainty when the storm was coming. We also used the network to access the AO-7 logging web page listed above to see when an AO-7 pass was not in our mode B so that we could turn to working other satellites when they were around at the same time. This networking service also earned a 100 point bonus as an experimental mode.  

To see a report on the overall PVRC/CARA Field Day Event  click here for the ARRL Soapbox for FD 2006.

 The list of our contacts are below: 

 Bonus Points for Satellite Station Contact: 100 points
  

The following people were seen at the Satellite tent this year and helped out.

Angela  KC2JPI
Art N3OY
Bernie K3BAZ
Dave N3OYF
Doug AA3S
Ed N2EC
Ed N3IHX
John W3GJN
Jon KF3O
Mark KB3GJE
Chris  Cather
Ryan Cather
Jocelyn Cather
Ray WB3GNO