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Field Day 2019 After Action Report

New/Upgrades for FD 2019:

• Raspberry Pi as Main Computer
• New power film 30W solar panel
• New 10aH liFePO4 battery
• Used tarp for shelter (harbor freight 12x16 tarp)
• Hammock
• Watts-up-Meter
• iPad as monitor for RPi
• JS8Call
• Wireless Keyboard

Future Upgrade Considerations:

• Bigger Battery
• More solar/bigger solar panel
• Smaller coax (RG 58U?)

Weather:

Hot and humid. Temps around 90 and storms rolling though in the morning around 1030. Was threatened later in the day with another round of storms but we never got more than another sprinkle.

General Notes:

Overall things went as expected. The RPi performed well with JS8Call being my primary FD mode. I also made a few Winlink connections during FD. While the RPi was designed to be a multi-function system, only a couple of those systems were utilized during FD 2019

Food:

Took chips and cookies to share. Again this year, 70% was brought back home. Took much less this year but was a lighter turnout for FD than years past.

For my food, I took dehydrated backpack meals. Two dinners and one breakfast. This was not enough if we had operated the entire 24 hour period. Also had a few snacks in the bag. Since we broke down early on Sunday, I didn’t eat the breakfast but had consumed both dinners on Saturday. Would need at least 2 more dinner entrees to be comfortable during a 24 hour event.

Sleeping/Shelter:

The hammock was a new addition this year and turned out to be a big winner. Shelter would have been an issue had it not been for the large tarp that is kept in the jeep. A more manageable sized tarp should be added to the go-bag. This in addition to the hammock could serve as a complete shelter setup, even without a table and chair. The tarp and hammock could be strung between two trees and the radio placed on the ground beneath the hammock during summer weather conditions. During winter conditions/wet weather, the radio could possibly be left in the bag and covered with the go-bag rain cover to provide additional weather protection. Digital radio operations could continue using the iPad from the hammock and the wireless hotspot on the pi to control the rig. Only the coax would protrude from he bag. Voice ops would prove more challenging.

AREDN Mesh:

I took a mesh node on a separate RPi but did not use it. Jeff (KG4IKT) did hook up 2 of his new dishes that provided mesh link to the mountain for them to use at the front end of the park. Andy, MJ, and I were in the back of the park and none of us used the mesh network this year.

Logging:

Logging was handled by JS8Call built in logger. I still need to figure out how to get the adif file imported into other logging software.

Solar & Battery

Solar was upgraded to a 30W Power Film Panel and the battery is now a 10aH liFePO4. The solar panel was able to keep up with battery consumption during the day since we had more sun than clouds and had periods of no radio operations as visitors came though the park. I made sure the radio was tuned off when not being operated. The battery was still at full charge at sunset. I was able to draw ~9.4AH out of the battery before it was depleted at 0300. I ran 20W during the day but reduced that to 10W after sunset. As the battery level dropped, I reduced power again to 5W. This was still adequate to make JS8 contacts but the 10AH battery just can’t hold up to the demands of FD. Battery will need to be upgraded to one of the new 23AH Dakota that is coming out in July 2019. This would have carried me into Sunday morning where the solar panel could have started charging again.

I also had the option of operating the radio off of the Jeep battery but chose not to. The purpose of FD this year was to test the 10AH battery and new 30W solar panel. Operating off of the jeep battery remains a viable backup plan as the appropriate connectors are kept in the go bag.

Generator:

Took the generator for Andy to use. Jeff also connected his mesh nodes to the generator. I didn’t use the generator at all this year.

GO-BAG:

The go box of the past is gone and the new go bag was deployed this FD. It is much lighter as a ThinkTank photo bag is used to house the radio gear. Several things from the kit were eliminated to reduce weight. The new bag has backpack straps that can be stowed when not in use and weighs ~21lbs without food. The bag was large enough to handle the food requirements of a 24 hour activation but water was carried separately. There is a Sawyer water filter in the go-bag if a water source had been close by.

Antennas:

I had planned on using my home made EFHW. However, MJ had issues with the antenna that he brought so I loaned him my EFHW. I used the TN07 antenna on a push up pole. For the first time, I used a t-post driven into the ground that the push up pole was secured to using cordage. This freed up the Jeep to be used to drive from one end of the park to the other instead of being tied down by the antenna like years past.

Emergency Mail Server:

The emergency email server was slimmed down and made to work with a more complete pi setup. The radio operator lost the web control interface and now uses a wireless device to connect via wifi to control the pi. This gives them the ability to make Winlink connections and post replies to the system via wifi. The end user sees pretty much the same as before. The hotspot was completely revamped. RaspAP is no longer used. The new hotspot will connect to the shack wifi when the jeep is in the garage and auto generate a hotspot when the shack wifi is no longer in range. This allows the RMS list to remain up to date as the list is auto-downloaded each night via a cron script when the jeep is in the garage and connected to the shack wifi. One downfall that needs to be addressed is the use of the FindArdop script. As of now, the only way to use this is with a VNC connection to the RPi. Need to try to generate a dynamic web page that could be utilized through the hotspot connection and reduce the need for VNC after the initial PAT startup.

VNC could be downloaded in advance to the EES and stored in the /var/www/html folder. Then links could be created so that if you needed VNC on a new computer, it could easily be downloaded from the EES itself.

The EES was only used on Sunday to demo to the Rutherford County group. It was not a deployed asset at our FD site.

Final Conclusions:

The setup works well but as always has room for improvements. Shelter needs to be addressed and a larger battery needs to be purchased. Even with a larger battery, 24 ops on FD might prove to be too much for the battery on a stormy/cloudy day. In a true emergency situation, I doubt the radio would be used in the same fashion and more care would be given to battery preservation. The amount of food carried in the go bag needs to be increased. You could operate for 24 hours with only 3 meals but hunger would be a factor. Not dangerous, just uncomfortable.

While I know a man-portable setup is possible, I don’t think this is a route I wish to pursue at present. The Jeep Wrangler is a capable 4x4 vehicle that should be able to reach remote locations if needed during a disaster. Utilizing the Jeep allows for more equipment to be carried. I still want to keep all of the gear as light as possible with all of the operating essentials kept in the primary bag. This way if the Jeep had to be abandoned, the primary radio gear could be easily transported.

TODO/TO Purchase

• Purchase Bigger Battery
• Purchase Tarp for Go Bag
• Add VNC download to EES
• Improve FindArdop Script on EES with PHP Page