Field Day Wants You
 |
Al Simons, WA1TYB
NARC Incident Commander
and Stuckee
|
Come one, come all, to the NARC Field Day
and Eating Extravaganza, June 21, 22 and
23! Once more, June brings glorious sunny
days with occasional rain and thunderstorms
— perfect weather for growing steel and
aluminum trees in Hollis, at the NARC Field
Day site on Ridge Rd!
For those of you not familiar with Field Day,
it is either a contest disguised as an
emergency preparedness drill, or the other
way around. It is also one of the highlights
of the NARC social calendar! Lots of
NARC friends and families come out just to
visit, to watch, or even to get some operating
time in. If you want to get a feeling for
contesting but are a bit mic (or key) shy, try
logging at one of the stations. Many people
have found that logging for this contest has
caused them to be bitten by the contest bug!
If you are building a station and thinking
about putting up a tower, or wondering how
a tower is put up, come and help build a few.
It is lots of fun!
Club Field Day Goals
- Have fun!
- Make a lot of contacts!
- Have fun!
We do have a lot of fun, and we do make a
lot of contacts! In fact, last year we made
more contacts than any other station in the
contest! It felt good to win the contest, but,
to me at least, it felt at least as good to sit
back and talk with friends under the dining
tarps. There really is something for
everyone at a NARC field day.
Operating Details
Once again we will be operating 15A (club
station, fifteen stations, operating entirely on
emergency power), and using the call sign
N1NH, courtesy of Jim Belanger. We’ll be
running CW and SSB on 160 through 6
meters, FM on 2m, 220 and 440 MHz, 1.2
GHz, and ATV on 902 MHz, plus satellite
and packet. Oops! I forgot the stations on
both extremes: the VLF station will be
operating on 5Mm (that’s Mega meters,
folks!), using carrier current continuous
waves, and the Infrared station will once
again be warming our food.
Schedule
NARC Field Day starts at 12:00 noon,
Friday June 21st, at Christopher’s Restaurant
in Hollis for pizza. Setup begins at 2:00 PM
on Buzz Muzzey’s property on Ridge Rd.
Operating begins on Saturday at 2:00 PM
and continues for 24 hours, until 2:00 PM
Sunday. Then we take it all down and put it
away by sundown. Until next year...
Help!
We need lots of help! Setup and tear down
take at least five (preferably ten) people per
tower, and we have three 70 foot towers and
a 40 foot one. If you can’t come Friday or
Saturday but still want to participate, help
tearing down the site on Sunday afternoon
would be tremendously appreciated! This is
really the core of the emergency
preparedness drill —how to set up and take
down a comprehensive communications
installation in a very short time. There is
lots to learn here, and we have some very
good teachers.
Tower School
If you want to try tower climbing to help
build (or take down) one of our towers but
haven’t done it before, NARC asks that you
participate in a tower school led by Sterling,
AK1K. School will be in session Saturday
morning, June 8th. Please contact Sterling at
883-3686 for more information.
World Wide Web…
We are going to try an experiment this year,
providing a World Wide Web page
highlighting our Field Day efforts, with a
nearly real-time score summary. Included
will be pictures of the site, pictures of set-up
activity and operating and other stuff as we
think of it. Any ideas for more content are
welcome! Check it out! The URL is
http://www.mv.com/ipusers/ww1y/narc/fd96
So, come one, come all to the NARC Field
Day site, to enjoy good fun, good food,
good friends and lots of operating, logging,
and building opportunities.
Back to In this issue...