Inside the tent as the rains begin abut 5 pm Friday	Ed K3IXD in rain gear inside the tent	Art and Dave W3DIO setting up antenna base
Assembled 2 meter antenna	Art tightening 440 antenna to the beam	Art and Sam raising the antennas
Two meters and 440 antennas at the top	Antennas positioned above the trees	Art and Sam lowering antennas for adjustment at 7:22 pm Friday
Art, Sam and Matt preparing to change the antenna's azimuth at 8:08 pm Friday	Stakes to be applied to the antenna stand legs after slight rotation of the antenna stand	Raising the antenna back up
Readjusting the antenna Saturday morning	Art adjusting the antenna. In the gray tent in the background the satellite station is on the left	Art and Sam further adjust antenna after the first AO-27 pass at the start of FD
Icom radio on table, Navigator on top and PrimeSat Controller above	Sunday Kenwood radio, then Navigator and then PrimeSat Controller	Closeup of the Navigator and the PrimeSat Controller
Yaesu rotator control box - elevation on left and azimuth on the right	Glen and Tom with Arrow antenna on a tripod	Glen and Tom set up for ISS pass at 12:05 pm Sunday
Tom holding an HT and moving the Arrow antenna for the ISS pass	After the pass the Arrow antenna and tripod are next to the box with the rest of the station	Laptop next to the Kenwood radio, Navigator and PrimeSat Controller
Pete at the end of FD and Maurice cooking burgers on the grill in the back

Report by Ed Cabic N2EC

 For Field Day 2008  CARA (Columbia Amateur Radio Association)  and PVRC (Potomac Valley Radio Club) again set up at the Triadelphia Ridge Elementary School, 13400 Triadelphia Road at the intersection of Folly Quarter and Triadelphia Road in Glenelg, MD. As we described in last year’s report, the location is latitude 39.264361 and longitude –76.983211 with a height above sea level of 640 feet which is 195 meters. 

When Art & Ed N2EC arrived a the Field Day site Friday afternoon about 4 pm the first order of business was to set up Art’s tent because there was a weather report that there would be rain and possible thunderstorms that afternoon. Helping us set up was Ed K3IXD. By 5:07 pm a hard rain with very strong winds caused the two windward tent poles to collapse. We could no longer use the tent. We decided to go into another tent with the GOTA station and the VHF/UHF group annex. We were set up on the left end of the tent.

 We set up the antenna stand and mounted the 2 meter and 440 antennas on a boom positioned in our Yaesu G5500 AZ/EL rotator which is controlled by a Primesat control box. Those helping on this project were Art, Dave W3DIO, Ed N2EC, Sam and Matt.

 On Saturday morning we assembled our satellite station. We could not use Cara’s Yaseu FT –847 because it was out for repairs. Art brought his Icom IC-910 and his Navigator interface. The station consisted of:
  Icom 910 radio dual band satellite radio
  PrimeSat Controller to control the az el rotators for the two antennas on the beam
  Navigator made by US Interface which connects with a usb cable to the usb port on the laptop to receive radio control information from the tracking program. Then a com port cable on the Navigator connects to the data and CAT control port on the radio.
   Sat PC 32 Tracking program. This program has a display on the laptop screen so the operators can see where the satellites’ footprints are on the ground. The program provides information to control the az-el rotators to point the antennas as well as to control the radio’s frequencies for doppler and to initially set the up and down frequencies for each satellite.

 We had problems with the components of this system as they were not all “talking together” and operating effectively.

 After the radio setup Saturday morning we noticed that the PrimeSat Controller was not receiving the current values of the calculated az and el values from the tracking program.  Art and Sam began an analysis of the software com ports of the computer and finally determined that the PrimeSat could not find and use the USB emulated COM port it had set up for itself. Although the COM port for the PrimeSat was there and working, the PrimeSat could not locate it while the Navigator was also plugged in. The Navigator sets up 6 emulated COM ports for itself. The PrimeSat seemed not to be able to find its own COM port among all the others that were running. We were able to force it to connect to its COM port when we set it to COM1, but even though it said it could talk to the PrimeSat, in effect it could not. It could read the rotator position, but would not take a command from the computer and point them appropriately.

 The work-around was to manually aim the antennas using the control box.

 When Field Day began at 2 pm we were manually controlling the control box.

As we were operating around 6-7 pm Saturday afternoon we realized that we were hearing stations on the birds, but we were not hearing ourselves. The question was whether the radio was sending out a strong enough signal. Art borrowed some watt meters for 2 meters and 440 and found that the Icom radio was not putting out any significant power.

 At about  8:38 pm a heavy rain started to  approach and the whole Field Day operation was shut down. for about 30 minutes.

On Sunday morning Art bought a different radio – the Kenwood TS-2000. This did have sufficient transmit power.

 We also checked the calibration of the antennas against the Sun, and found they were 15 degrees too far to the right. Further aiming was adjusted accordingly.

 On Sunday we could not hear the two FM birds in the morning, but we did hear stations on AO-7 during its 8:40 am pass. Finally on the 10:05 am pass of VO-52 we contacted  K4CQ  2A Virginia which is the Lynchburg Amateur Radio Club in Lynchburg, Virginia. This is the same club that we made our single contact last year on SO-50.

 Sunday morning, Tom K3CXW and Glen KC4KMY came to the site and set up Tom’s tripod with an Arrow antenna for working the FM birds. Tom had a 35 watt amplifier and he used battery power. For the 12:05 pm pass of ISS (the International Space Station) Tom and Glen listened for any signal from the astronauts during the pass, but nothing was heard.

 The few remaining passes were very low and we decided not to work them.

 Lessons Learned

1. Our Antennas – We don’t have optimum antennas  --since they are long they focus on too narrow of a coverage area. We need shorter antennas that cover a broader angle.

2. Not Hearing Ourselves – We need to figure out how to configure the radio so that as we are tuning up on the satellite mode we can use a keyer to send dits and dahs so that we can find ourselves on the downlink of  the SSB birds. 

Subsequent information from some of the clubs around the area revealed we were indeed sending a good signal up. Several reported they could hear us on many of the satellites, but we appeared not able to work anyone. That leads us to now conclude our receive was faulty. In retrospect, the solid carrier we always heard on SO-50 – without any voice – should have been the clue. We now believe we were being de-sensed by the “Rover” VHF/UHF operation which was on all VHF/UHF bands all weekend, and whose antennas were literally pointed down the throat of our antennas. Once again – SEPARATION is critical. We need to remember this for next time.

 3. Have Access to Watt meters.  If we experience again the condition where we can not hear ourselves, we should have watt meters to make sure that our radios are producing the appropriate amount of power.

 4. Have a compass  to align the Antenna stand to point north. Also use a Sun program to confirm the alignment. We tried using a Sun alignment early on Saturday, but the Sun was behind clouds early in the day and we didn’t get it quite right.

 5. Lindenblad Antennas – Because of the difficulty of assuring that the antennas are properly pointed toward the satellite during the quick passes, we should look into using stationary antennas. Pete K3IN suggested considering a Lindenblad. “The Lindenblad: The Ultimate Satellite Omni” is a 9 page article at the Amsat web site at
http://www.amsat.org/amsat/articles/w6shp/lindy.html A problem may be that for 2 meters the structure may be large and difficult to transport.

 6. Obtain a wifi card that allows us to access the internet during Field Day. That way we could check internet sites that would tell if the pass for AO-7 is in mode B which we can operate rather than in mode A with a 10 meter downlink that we can not operate. We might also see if the astronauts are operating at a given time.

 Those at the satellite station who helped out or who stopped by to talk and encourage us on were: 

 Thanks to Art for comments/revisions on this report.