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Field Day 2022 After Action Report

New/Upgrades for FD 2022:

Weather:

Saturday was warmer than last year with a high around 95F. We were threatened by one popup thunder shower but it died out before reaching the site.

Sunday was overcast. No rain. Temp 88F. Thunder storms did roll through the area late in the day after we had packed up and departed the FD site.

A weather report was pulled each morning using the FT5d by sending an APRS message to WXBOT. This is quick but only gives a very brief report. In addition, it will only work if you can get into a digipeater. A Winlink weather report should have been pulled for a more detailed forecast. It would also be nice if a basic weather radar image could be pulled using Winlink. One would have to be careful with this and be certain the image was small enough as to not clog the Winlink inbox.

General Notes:

A total of three radios were used this year. The primary station used the Yaesu 857D and a Pi 4 to run FT8. Band conditions were good for digital ops. I prefer to run JS8Call but FT8 will net more contacts on summer FD. JS8Call will be reserved for Winter Field Day where FT8 is not allowed as a digital mode. This entire setup was run from batteries that were not part of the RV. (See Solar/Battery below)

The second station was an APRS digipeater. This was run with a second Pi 4 and a Yaesu FT65r connected to a Mobilinkd TNC 3. The FT65 required one battery swap late in the evening on Saturday. The dead battery was placed on charge using the cradle and a cable that could be plugged up to a 12V source. I utilized the Powerwerx adapter https://amzn.to/3xUbdbv from my 2M EDC bag to charge the battery from the car’s power port. The second battery for the radio lasted until we packed up on Sunday. The Moblinkd battery lasted for the duration of FD. The Pi for the digipeater was connected to the TV in the RV giving a nice display of the APRS map for visitors. The digipeater was NOT connected to the internet. With a roll up Pole at ~25 feet, it was heard by the wide area digipeater (W1ARN) without issue. This Pi was powered from one of the RV circuits. There was only a minor issue with this setup. Because of a misconfiguration, the APRS station wasn’t digipeating at first. I enabled digipeating in YAAC and it stated working as it should.

The third radio was the Yaesu FT5d carried on my person for comms around the FD site.

This was the first year that I put out a call to viewers to participate in the Field Day challenge asking them to post Winlink position reports. This went over extremely well and should be done every FD. Pulling the mobile station request which contains 100 stations showed a total of 55 stations that participated. I am sure there were others but this was just the ones on that particular list. Unless my math is off, that is a 55% of the folks on the list participating.

Several Winlink RF connections were made. Some on HF and some on 2M to WC4EOC-8. When making 2M connections I disconnected the digipeater antenna and connected it to the 857 long enough to make the connection.

Food:

Food is no longer an issue since moving to the RV for FD ops. The Pelican cooler was loaded with drinks and ~20lbs of ice. The ice lasted the entire weekend.

Sleeping/Shelter:

The RV was used for the first time for summer Field Day. This was a HUGE bonus allowing myself and others to escape the heat for a bit and enjoy the AC provided by the RV and the generator. (See generator notes below) The station could be operated from inside or outside using a tablet/laptop.

Logging:

Logging for my station was handled by the built in logger in FT8 and the log was exported as an adif file and sent to Marvin so he could import into the primary logging software. It would be great if a cross platform solution were adopted by the club. With that said, I don’t know of a rock solid, easy user interface, cross platform solution that also offers network capabilities.

Solar & Battery

I opted to take two batteries this year. One was the Dakato Lithium 10AH. The second was the battery box built built recently that contains the Miady 16AH battery. Something was off with the 16AH battery. Even though I didn’t top off the charge before FD, it didn’t last as long as it should. This needs to be investigated to see if there is an issue with the box and something is draining the battery while it isn’t being used or if there is an issue with the battery itself. This battery is a couple of years old now but has seen little use. The Miady 8AH batteries have seen much more use and I have not noticed any degradation in their performance.

Two solar panels were utilized this year in addition to the RV solar. One was the TP folding solar (60W) panel and the second was the Power Film (30W) solar panel. This provided a total of 90W which was enough to keep the batteries charged on Saturday. Sunday was overcast and these two panels provided little charge. Moving forward, a cable needs to be run from the RV batteries to inside the RV providing a way to power the radios from the RV battery itself. The RV with 290W of panels was able to generate total of 67AH of power during the FD operation. This would be more than enough to run the radio at a full 100W if needed and never deplete the battery. Especially since the generator is running everything inside.

Generator:

The new generator https://amzn.to/3OAfXK2 was able to power the RV for the duration of FD. This included powering the AC unit after adding the soft start https://amzn.to/3A7IiUa. Two 20lb propane tanks lasted for ~27 hours. The generator was started at 0830 on Saturday. The first tank was swapped at 2200 on Saturday and had ~6% left. The generator was turned off at noon on Sunday allowing it time to cool before departure. There was ~13% left in the second tank. These tank sensors https://amzn.to/3OLqBgY were used to acquire the readings below:

Saturday
  • 0830 - Generator started. Both 20lb tanks at 100% AC set to 68F.
  • 1030 - 97% tank reading
  • 1145 - 85%
  • 1300 - 77%
  • 1400 - 69%
  • 1500 - 60%
  • 1630 - 48%
  • 1710 - 41%
  • 1845 - 29%
  • 2008 - 21%
  • 2104 - 14%
  • 2130 - 11%
  • 2200 - 6% - Swapped to second tank
Sunday
  • 0530 - 54% - Outside temperature was 77F overnight
  • 0630 - 46%
  • 0730 - 42%
  • 0900 - 31%
  • 1000 - 25%
  • 1110 - 17%
  • 1200 - 13% - Generator turned off

7.8 Gallons to refill tanks. 3.99 per gallon = $31.12

GO-BAG:

Moving to a modular go bag was a big improvement for this year. The only thing found missing was one HDMI cable. Original plan was for the digipeater to run headless but once I found out there were kids visiting the FD site, I connected to digi to the RV TV so the APRS map could be displayed. This left me short an HDMI cable that I had originally planned on using with a monitor for the primary station. I opted to use the MacBook Air to VNC into the Raspberry Pi connected to the Yaesu 857 radio.

Antennas:

My EFHW kit antenna was used for the HF antenna. A rollup Jpole was used for the digi.

Emergency Email Server:

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.

It was nice to drop back to a simpler setup than what I tried to run for Winter Field Day. There were virtually no failures outside of having issues charging the batteries on Sunday morning due to the lack of sunshine. Running a wire to the RV battery will eliminate this issue all together. There is also a “Solar on the Side” plug on the outside of the RV. I already have an adapter cable made that converts it from SAE connector to power pole. A power pole extension cable needs to be made so the radio can be connected to this power source if setting up outside. I utilized this plug to put a bit of juice back in the 10AH battery on Sunday morning. I connected from the solar on the side plug to the solar input jack on the BuddiPole power mini. Then connected the 10AH battery to the battery jack on the power mini. This netted me ~2.4AH of charge in 1.5 hours to the 10AH battery from the RV battery.

Talking with Kenny (KC4OJS) after FD, he suggested that a monitor could be run outside of the RV as an information display for visitors. This could be run from a Pi that is networked into the RV or run on its own network utilizing the hotspot. This same Pi could also incorporate the Emergency Email Server (EES). What could be run on this Pi? A webpage with various information (ie Weather, schedule, etc) or maybe a video playing on a loop? The video would have to be hosted on the Pi as internet isn’t used at my station during FD. Maybe display the APRS map? This is something that will need to be considered/researched. Protecting it from weather (heat, cold, rain) could present a challenge.

TODO/TO Purchase

  • Run wire to RV batteries for radios DONE
  • Build extension cable for use with solar on the side DONE
  • Research information monitor idea DONE
  • Research radar image for Winlink

END OF REPORT

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