Featured, General, Newsletter, On The Air

2020 Thirteen Colonies Operations Report – A Record Year for K2K

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The 2020 Thirteen Colonies Special Event is in the books as I write this. The K2K New Hampshire Colony had a record year in 2020. All of the members of the 2020 K2K operating team are also members of the Nashua Area Radio Society…

Source: 2020 Thirteen Colonies Operations Report – A Record Year for K2K

The 2020 Thirteen Colonies K2K New Hampshire team had an amazing year this year!

Matt Strelow, KC1XX joined the K2K team this year. Matt’s superstation and he and his team of world-class operators enabled us to break some records in 2020. Our 2020 operator team included:

  • AB1BY – Abby, Operating from AB1OC, Hollis, NH
  • AB1OC – Fred, Hollis, NH (State & QSL Manager)
  • AB1QB – Anita, Hollis, NH
  • AC1DC – Jamey, Nashua, NH
  • K1DLM – Dave, Operating from AB1OC, Hollis, NH
  • K1GQ – Bill, Wolfeboro, NH
  • K1QX – Craig, Operating from KC1XX, Mason, NH
  • KC1IMK – Keith, Candia, NH
  • KC1IML – Mark, Candia, NH
  • KC1XX – Matt, Mason, NH
  • KM3T – Dave, Operating from KC1XX, Mason, NH
  • NE1B – Bill, Operating from Hudson, NH
  • NN1C – Marty, Operating from KC1XX, Mason, NH
  • W1FV – John, Operating from KC1XX, Mason, NH
  • W3UA – Gene, Bedford, NH
  • WA1Z – Bob, Operating from KC1XX, Mason, NH

All of the members of the 2020 K2K operating team are also members of the Nashua Area Radio Society.

A Record Year for the 2020 K2K Team

The K2K Team made an amazing 22,696 contacts during the July 1 – July 7, 2020, Thirteen Colonies period! This shattered the previous event record for a single state of 16,092 contacts. We are hoping that this will be an event record when the final 2020 results are in. Equally amazing was the fact that over half of the K2K operators made over 1,000 contacts including some ops with relatively modest home stations.

2020 13 Colonies Special Event Certificate - K2K Included
2020 13 Colonies Special Event Certificate

You can read all about our 2020 K2K operation via the link above. Information on how to obtain a K2K QSL card and an event certificate are also included in the link.

More to the 2020 K2K Story

The story behind K2K’s success this year is all about our operators who used their home stations to contribute a good portion of our final contacts. It’s much more difficult to manage pileups and make many contacts from a smaller station with wire antennas and limited power. I want to especially thank our operators who put in the hard work from their home stations to help us make contacts – thank you!

K2K’s 2020 Thirteen Colonies operation included some great stations for sure but the real story around our success was our operator team. Everyone worked very, very hard to make contacts and our results demonstrate this. There was great teamwork with lots of collaboration to ensure that we did a good job of covering all of the bands, modes, and DX around the world. I am proud to have been part of the 2020 K2K Team!!

Fred, AB1OC

Featured, Field Day, General, Newsletter

Submitting your Score for Field Day

Field Day 2020 is now over and you have until Tuesday, July 28th to submit your log and bonus points.  Members can find details in our Field Day Forum on the bonus points that we achieved as a group. Here are some guidelines on how to submit your score.

Steps to Submit your Score

  1. Export a Cabrillo file from your logging software
  2. Capture the breakdown of your score by band and mode from your logging program.  For N1MM it is the score window.

    N1MM Score Window
    N1MM Score Window
  3. Collect the evidence required for your bonus points:
    • Natural Power Bonus – List of QSOs made on natural power
    • Formal messaging – Copies of each message you originated, relayed or received (up to 10)
    • Message to ARRL Section Manager (Copy of fully serviced message)
    • Field Day Bulletin – an accurate copy of the message
    • Publicity from the local media – a copy of a press release sent to the local media or a copy of the actual media publicity received.
  4. You can submit your score via the web form provided by ARRL.  The link to this is http://field-day.arrl.org/fdentry.php
  5. On the web form, fill in your information (Call, ARRL Section, Number of Participants, Entry Class, etc.)  For the Club or Group Name, you can enter Nashua Area Radio Society so that your points count toward our club score.
  6. Check off the bonus points that you earned and upload the documents that you collected in step 3.
  7. Use the score breakdown from your logger to fill in the Band/Mode QSO Breakdown.  Note that you may need to combine your QSOs from multiple digital modes on each band to fill in the Digital QSO columns.  For example, in the Score window illustrated above, on 40 meters, we had 128 FT4 QSOs and 9 FT8 QSOS, so I would enter 137 for the total 40m digital QSOs.

    ARRL Webform - QSO Breakdown
    ARRL Webform – QSO Breakdown
  8. Use the “Choose File” button to upload your Cabrillo file.
  9. Check over all of your entries on the web form.  Then fill in your Name, Call, and email at the bottom and submit your entry.
  10. Any questions about bonus points, scoring, or other Field Day rules?  Consult the ARRL Field Day page and review the rules.

Anita, AB1QB presented a segment on Submitting your Field Day score as part of the June Tech Night on Field Day from Home.  For more details on Field Day score submission, you can watch the video of that Tech Night and view the slides on our Tech Night page

Featured, Field Day, General, Newsletter, Station Equipment

AC1FX Field Day 2020

AC1FX Field Day – The Shack

My shack is more of a secretary desk of a shack-in- the-box. But it’s not the shack so much as the radio right. This is what I used for Field Day at AC1FX this year.

AC1FX Field Day
My Humble Shack

I have an Icom 7300 running 100W and I connected it to my laptop to log my contacts.

The Antenna
7 band OCF Dipole up 35 ft.

The Antenna

They say the antenna is the most important part of any setup. I’d go as far as maybe half along with the radio. My antenna is a 7 band Off Center Fed (OCF dipole). It’s only up 35 feet so it’s only a half-wave above the ground on 20M. 

AC1FX Field Day - On the Air
AC1FX On the Air

Retrospect

I’m writing this after the fact so my hindsight is clearer. I had a great time this year.  Even though I think I made more contacts with the Club last year, being able to talk to other home class (1D) stations made up for it. I operated on in HF SSB mostly on 80 and 40 Saturday night and 10M on Sunday.  For me, 80 and 40 were open to Penn and New York, while Sunday 10M was more open to Ohio and Illinois. My original plan was to try to sit on a frequency and do a run. That seemed to work well for others but I found out they had higher power output and higher or more directional antennas. I sat on 28.460 around noon today and picked up 6 QSOs but they were relatively local. I then went on search and pounce and had so much fun seeing what was out there.  My most surprising contact was N3FJP of software fame. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was using N1MM+ for my logger. 

Improvements 

Just a few things I would like to do for next time : 

  • If I could get my dipole up to 66 ft it would at least be a ½ wave over the ground on 40M. 
  • Maybe put up my old Cushcraft R8 vertical and see how that goes. 
  • Practice CW more. It seems like they were having fun at the bottom of the bands but the fast pace of a contest and my lack of speed were incompatible.  
  • Do more digital. Although for me this year talking to people did seem fun. 

If you worked field day and are a NARS member don’t forget to add the full club name (Nashua Area Radio Society) in your entry.  See this link for details.

73,

Jeff, AC1FX 

Radio Amateurs Developing Skills Worldwide