High Sierra Field Day Group

The new LED flashlights have come a long way. At Pacificon Frank found a very bright and very small LED flashlight. Using a CREE XR-E 3 Watt LED, it puts out about 160 lumens, amazing for a 7/8 by 3″ light. This is far more than a 3D Maglite, and is about double the light from last year’s 3W Luxeon LEDs, so this is a significant increase. These particular flashlights are available from LedWholesalers.com, but there are many similar products on eBay and elsewhere. There are many models that have different features. One good source of flashlight information is Candlepower Forums.

Our New web page on LED Flashlights

Pacificon was excellent, and we saw quite a few FD Group folks there including Frank, Dawn, Chris, Mike C, Eric, Glenn, Ken, Oliver, Cal, Bob I, and probably more that I’m not recalling right now. We took some photos and we’ll set up an album for them on the gallery here shortly.

The Pacificon Antenna Forum on Friday was excellent as usual, and I encourage folks who are interested in antennas to attend that forum if they can.

We do have a new photo gallery here on the website, and encourage group members to post photos of group outings and other interesting stuff. Contact AlanB for getting set up to post.

The Pacificon HFPack forum went well, with Ken’s organization and help from Bill, Oliver, Eric and others. The gathering the park Sunday afternoon was met with wonderful weather and some good propagation for a few HFPack contacts.

Field Day is long over, and we are preparing for CQP and Pacificon. This year’s FD was a bit different, Cal brought his station and beam, and Alan put his KW station in the trailer. Mike set up the big wire antenna again and tuned it differently. Brad’s balloon popped way too soon. Bob brought his motorhome and set up VHF in there.

I just put some photos up in the new Gallery. See Link on the lower right.

Field Day is only two weeks away. It is time to check those lists, twice, and prepare.

• Review the Field Day Handbook
• Make any last minute procurements
• Change the Generator oil and test it
• Charge and test the batteries
• Make sure the tent poles and stakes are with the tent
• Inventory the cables and don’t forget the Microphone and Key
• Get the maps and GPS ready
• Find the Instruction Manuals and pack them

See you there!!

The FD Planning went well, see the notes in the wiki (in the members only area). Plans for FD 2007 are shaping up nicely. Discussion is in a private Google discussion list this year.

A page has been added to the wiki with links to other FD group web pages that have useful information to review. There is an FD Primer, and other FD planning documents.

MikeF is going to make another site survey looking for an improved site.

Welcome back to our corner of the internet. Lots of things have been happening. We had a great fall campout. We are starting to think about Field Day, and the next campout.

The all-important question is, where do we go this year for Field Day? Should we go to the 2006 site again, or try to go back to an earlier site.

We also need to schedule the Field Day meeting. Frank offered his place at one point, so we’ll see if he still wants to do it and what weekends would be available.

Enter the wiki for more details!!

The Wiki content is growing. There are some nice collections of links on ElectricBikes, and GpsDisciplinedOscillators. The Fall Campout planning is progressing at it looks like there is enough interest to hold one.

I have added a Wiki to this WEBlog. In the Wiki you will find lots more information and discussions about Ham Radio, Field Day, and related subjects. Wiki’s are designed to make it easy to add and manage web content, so there will be lots more as time goes on:

 Enter Wiki Here or use the Links/Enter Wiki link in the right hand column.

Field Day 2006 is over now, and after having some problems finding a site we had a great Field Day! The new site was above Sonora in the Stanislaus National Forest. This year it was hot, and due to the late rains the mosquitos were a bit thick, but we set up and had a good Field Day. Mike WA6ZTY set up a bobtail curtain for 40m, we put up Glenn WB6W’s 2 element steppir at about 50 feet, and various other dipoles etc. The trees at this site are a bit shorter than we’re used to, most in the 50-75 foot range. I used the CSV17 launcher for this, and had to run the pressure way down to avoid overshooting too many trees.

We had some minor problems with the Access Point and went over to the backup, but the main one was working when tested later, so it must have needed a rest…

The FDLog program worked well, and the new Q editor was lauded for convenience. More improvements are on the way already.

We had some noise from battery chargers and generators that we’ll have to look into next year more carefully.

We used Mike K3MC’s Hercules solid state 500w amp. It broke through some of the pileups and made some for us. It did give some problems to at least one other rig with apparent overloading, but other rigs did not seem to mind.

The bands were a bit tough, and the Bobtail didn’t seem to be working quite right so the overall Q count was a bit lower than usual, but it was fun and as always we learned a few new things.

Next year perhaps we’ll have built some lightweight monoband beams, and a Spiderbeam to try out. The bugs will be worked out of the Bobtail.

Frank and Eric (and Glenn) did a lot of research and driving, and located a new site in Stanislaus National Forest at about 6000 feet elevation. We’ll be departing early Thursday to make the 3.5 hour trip (more with the trailer). See you on the air! We’ll be using Glenn’s call this year, WB6W. It loooks like we’ll have about 14 people attending our group campout this year.

What a year! The El Dorado National Forest is our usual Field Day destination, but this year they are really messed up! Our usual places are all NO VEHICLES ALLOWED due to some legal SNAFUs they are dealing with. Seems that some people don’t want the National Forests to be used anymore except on foot. (I thought we had National Parks for that?)

Read the rest of this entry »