YouTube | Webstore | Patreon | Twitter | Tip Jar | Linux 101 | AAR List

Field Day 2020 After Action Report

New/Upgrades for FD 2020:

• Fire Tablet for VNC (Still testing and may change)
• Yaesu 891
• 10-40M EFHW Antenna Prototype

Future Upgrade Considerations:

• Spare Battery
• More solar/bigger solar panel 120W panel
• Small Inexpensive Multimeter (Purchased 29JUNE2020)
• Add 80M to EFHW antenna

Weather:

Saturday was cooler than years past and overcast much of the day. I opted not to take the fan this year and was fine without it on Saturday. We only experienced one brief rain shower on Saturday that lasted for ~10 minutes.

Sunday was still overcast but the heat/humidity ramped up. No rain until later in the day on Sunday after we had packed up and left.

General Notes:

I packed for field day in 30 minutes this year. https://youtu.be/8wSvfAfofsk I wasn’t missing anything major. Come to think of it, I wasn’t missing anything minor either :-)

Things went well this year but attendance was down. This was probably due to Covid-19. Our club decided to only work in the field on Saturday and most worked Sunday from their home stations. I opted to visit another club on Sunday and demo the RPi running digital modes.

On Saturday, I worked mostly JS8Call and made several Winlink connections as well. I did make a handful of HF voice contacts just to test the antenna. In addition, I connected the pi to the Yaesu FT65R via the Mobilinkd TNC. This provided a full blown digipeater to the FD site and the capability of sending/receiving APRS messages.

On Sunday, I setup the station in the same configuration as Saturday. However, the APRS station was not being picked up by the wide area digipeater in our area. I confirmed the pi was working with the FT65 by sending an APRS message to the FTM400 in the Jeep. Not being able to hit the wide area digi was either due to antenna height or lack of power since I was limited to 5W with the HT.

Both days I was successful in posting a position report using Winlink. This could have also been done with JS8. The advantage of doing this through Winlink is that I could also post a comment along with my position report. During an emergency, this comment could be used to relay critical information to other operators nearby and/or anyone in the world that had an internet connection.

Food:

I opted to only take two dehydrated meals in my radio go bag along with a few snacks. Without the overnight stay, this was plenty. In addition, I took my small Igloo cooler filled with water/Gatorade and topped off the ice each morning.

Sleeping/Shelter:

While shelter wasn’t needed this year, I still need to come up with a viable solution. I have the large 8 man tent that could be used but would like to search for a smaller/lighter solution.

AREDN Mesh:

N/A

Logging:

Logging was handled by JS8Call built in logger. Since I use field day for experimenting and promoting digital modes with the Pi, logging isn’t really an issue for me. I wanted to play with networking the new FD logging software but we couldn’t get a WiFi connection setup that would cover the entire FD area. This will need to be run over Mesh or a higher power WiFi router in the future to get good coverage. Or a really crazy idea might be to elevate a pi in the middle of the FD site that could be used to connect both ends of the park? How long could we run a pi from a small battery pack?

Solar & Battery

The battery was in an unknown state at the beginning of FD because I chose not to charge it the night before. I placed the battery on charge via the Power Film solar panel as soon as I arrived at the FD site. Solar power generation was limited due to overcast skies but I never ran out of battery power on Saturday. The battery never got to full charged either. I didn’t bother connecting the Watts Up meter since I was unsure of the initial condition of the battery. The meter is great when you know the initial state but provides less useful information without the initial charge data. I am questioning my thoughts on upgrading solar. It might be money better spent to purchase an additional 10AH battery instead. Test the setup with an additional battery and then decide if additional solar panels are needed. This would both be less expensive and add less weight to the radio go bag.

Operating the radio off of the jeep battery remains a viable backup plan should the batteries in the radio go bag become depleted.

Generator:

N/A

GO-BAG:

The radio go bag that I put together last year has served me well. There have been a few tweaks to it and there will be more going forward but overall I am pleased with the setup up. It is a huge improvement over the old style go box that I originally built.

Antennas:

This year I ran a prototype antenna that I am working on. This is a 49:1 transformer on a custom built wire winder. The antenna is good 10-40M without a tuner. I ran it in an inverted V configuration and was very pleased with the NVIS performance on 40M. I am uncertain what the power rating is but I made a couple of long winded Winlink connections at 50W and didn’t saturate the toroid. I need to explore the possibility of adding 80M to this antenna.

Emergency Email Server:

Available but not utilized.

PHPBB Forums:

Available but not utilized.

Final Conclusions:

Overall I was pleased with the performance of the entire station. There is always room for improvements and I am certain a few things will change between now and winter field day.

I didn’t address the lack of battery/solar power that was noted last year. Due to less operating time this year, this wasn’t an issue but could be in future deployments.

Next year, I may consider mixing things up a bit. FD has become a bit routine and I would like to push the boundaries a bit more. JS8Call is fantastic software but almost makes FD too easy. I did struggle with Winlink connections at times. This was mainly due to my “regular” gateways being busy because of FD. I need to search out more gateways that I can reliably connect to at any give time. I would have had more options if the antenna I was using was capable of working 80M.

Another thought is to avoid 40M & 80M altogether next year. Maybe stick to higher bands and see if we are able to both make contacts and establish Winlink connections. Since I mainly focus on the lower bands, this could prove to be more of a challenge. Maybe use a 20M dipole as the primary antenna.

TODO/TO Purchase - [ ] Purchase Additional Battery - [ ] Purchase Additional Solar?? - [ ] Add 80M to prototype antenna - [ ] Find Additional Reliable Winlink Gateways - [ ] How long can we run a pi from a battery pack?

END OF REPORT