Anita, AB1QB, and I will be operating from our home station for the first time ever during 2020 ARRL Field Day. We are going to be a two transmitter station on emergency power.
We are going to invite a few additional operators (mostly those in the NARS Student-Teacher Contest) to operate our station remotely during Field Day as well.
We all will be operating using Anita’s callsign, AB1QB from our station.
AB1QB-AB1OC Field Day Station
We are going to be operating Field Day using two transmitters on the air at the same time. The first will be one of the radios in our main shack.
Our second transmitter will be our Flex 6700 SDR operated over the network in our home. We will locate the control point for the second transmitter in our dining room so that we won’t interfere with each other when we are both operating in SSB mode.
We will be using a dual-display dashboard setup to make operating Digital during Field Day easy to use. We’ll be using our Flex Maestro to operate the SDR in our shack over our network.
Our HF antenna system for Field Day will be our main tower. We will be QRV on all Ham bands from 160m through 23cm.
Anita is anxious to try out our new 6m antenna during Field Day. She hopes to make lots of contacts on 6m FT8/FT4 as well as on the other HF bands.
Emergency Power
The emergency power source for our station will be a 15 Kw whole house generator at our QTH. We will be operating off the power grid for the full Field Day period. The generator will also power the computers and everything else in our home during the Field Day operating period.
Planned Field Day Activities at Our Station
The Nashua Area Radio Society is planning lots of group activities in a Social Distancing format for our members during Field Day. Our plans include:
- A messaging activity hosted by Sterling, AK1K
- A public official and EMCOM official meeting via Zoom
- A training session for the operators here at our Station prior to the start of Field Day on Saturday
Learning More About Field Day 2020…
We have done several Tech Nigh programs to help our members get ready for Field Day 2020 from their Home Stations. The Tech Night programs include:
- Setting up and using the N1MM+ Logger
- How-to Do Field Day At Home
Members who are logged in can view the videos and presentations for these Tech Nights on our Tech Night Page.
We are really looking forward to Field Day 2020 and operating from our home station for the first time during Field Day. We are also excited about the group activities that NARS is planning. To learn more about NARS’ Field Day plans, be sure to follow our Field Day Forum postings.
Fred, AB1OC