Tag Archives: Field Day

Digital, Education and Training, Featured, Field Day, General, Newsletter

2nd Field Day Prep Meeting Recap

I wanted to provide an update to all club members on our progress related to Field Day 2017.  We had our second field-day meeting yesterday at the Nashua Public Library.  I’m pleased to report that we have selected the Hollis Brookline High School for a 2nd year as our site.  Paperwork has been submitted to the school seeking formal approval.

Now that a site has been identified, formal station planning has begun.  Once again, we will be operating this year as a 7 Alpha, which means we will have 7-transmitters, plus a GOTA and a Satellite station.  We will setup the following stations:

  • 10/15/80m SSB
  • 20m SSB
  • 40m SSB
  • 10/15/80m CW
  • 20m CW
  • 40m CW
  • 6m VHF
  • A Digital Station
  • A “Get on the Air” GOTA Station
  • Satellite Station with computer-controlled Azimuth / Elevation rotor
  • A VHF/UHF “talk-in” station

As there are many new members in the group, I wanted to take a minute to explain the complexities of this type of setup.  Operating so many transmitters in close proximity is a recipe for disaster unless proper precautions are made.  We must do this right so all the stations will be able to operate without interference to one another.  If we don’t, it would be very easy to have de-sense or worse case physical front-end damage to a receiver where it would require repair.

To combat these issues, we are going to erect 3 towers this year, each separated by about 300-feet.  Each of them will have a tri-band HF beam antenna directed to the southwest and pointed perpendicular to the axis of the towers.  In addition, we will be using a device called a triplexer to separate the single antenna feed coming from the tribanders into individual 10m, 15m and 20m feeds to the radios.  Each of these feeds will be further protected with a band-specific Band Pass Filter (BPF).  This will allow 3 separate radios to transmit and receive simultaneously over a single antenna.

There will be several new concepts introduced this year, including the addition of a Wi-Fi Mesh LAN environment to connect all the sites computers together.  This LAN will provide shared internet access as well through a 4G cellular connection.

Field Day - WiFi Mesh Topology
WiFi Mesh Topology

We will be running the N1MM logger in network mode this year as well.  This will allow for real-time tracking of our combined score, with a “dashboard” being available in the public information tent.

Another new concept will be a remote radio setup.  Given the layout of the Hollis Brookline site, the third tower will be located remotely on a lower field.  Although it’s still within the 1,000’ transmitter perimeter allowed by ARRL, the third tower will be quite isolated.  We have decided to place two Flex Radio’s at the third tower for our GOTA and Digital operations.  The operators will connect to these radios over the Wi-Fi Mesh network, allowing them to be anywhere on-site.  The user interface for the GOTA station will be a Flex Maestro controller, which emulates a traditional “knob and button” radio.

Our primary objective is to make sure there is something for everyone.  We want to be inclusionary, and give anyone that’s interested an opportunity to participate.

We have established a regular bi-weekly planning meeting at the Nashua Public library.  Generally, the meetings are held on Sunday’s from 1 – 3 PM.  However, the next meeting will be on Saturday, April 8th from 12 – 2 PM due to lack of availability of facilities on Sunday.  We will resume the normal schedule on Sunday, April 23rd from 1-3PM.

I will be sharing additional details at club meetings and through N1FD.ORG as things progress.

Dave, K1DLM

Hashtags: #ARRLFD 

Activities, Featured, Field Day, General, Newsletter

Field-Day Kick-off Meeting

I am really excited to be leading the field day effort for the Nashua Area Radio Club this year.  Since this is my first time, I will be relying on the club members to help me make this a success.

It is rapidly approaching, and with this in mind, I’ve scheduled an initial “kick-off” meeting for Sunday, March 5th at the Nashua Library in the Hunt Room from 1-3 PM.  I’d love to see all team leads from last year, as well as anyone interested in participating this year to please attend.  My intention is to identify a planning team at this meeting to start working through all the details.

The first item on the agenda will be to identify potential locations for this year.  With this in hand, we will create a site survey crew to evaluate the options and decide which site best fits our needs.  Ideally, the site will be centrally located to Nashua, and allow for public access.  In order to accommodate the towers, we will need a field between 600-1000 feet long North to South, and at least 120 feet wide.   A 1000-foot site would allow us to erect 3-towers.  It would also be ideal if there are restroom facilities, and potentially access to a kitchen / cafeteria.  This is especially important if there is inclement weather.

We also need to decide what type of station we should run this year, and what type of antennas are needed.  Last year, we erected a V-beam array for 40-meters which was very effective.  We may want to consider adding a second one.  Other questions remain open, such as should we have more digital operations, a VHF station, or perhaps an enhanced satellite setup?

We also need to determine what class and entry strategy we want to use this year.  In 2016, we operated as a 7-Alpha, as this seemed to be a sweet spot.

It takes a village to pull this event together, but as the old adage goes “many hands make light work”.   I hope to see you all on the 5th.

Dave, K1DLM

Hashtags: #ARRLFD #N1FD

Activities, Antennas, Featured, General, Newsletter, Space, Station Equipment

A Portable Satellite Station Part 1 – A Simple Station for AO-85

Our club has quite a few members who are interested in space communications. We decided to build a simple portable satellite station last year for our 2016 Field Day operation to learn about satellite communications and to create something new for folks to work with during 2016 Field Day.

Simple Portable Satellite Station
Simple Portable Satellite Station

Our 1.0 Portable Satellite Station was a relatively simple setup built around an HT, an Elk 2m/70cm satellite antenna, and some gear to improve the receive performance and transmit power output of the HT. All of the gear was mounted on a board to make it easy to transport and it is powered by a LIPO rechargeable battery. The gear in our 1.0 station is made up of the following:

Improved Portable Satellite Station Antenna Support
Improved Satellite Antenna Support

Our first contacts with our 1.0 station were made using the Elk Antenna hand-held. Later, we created a “plumber’s special” setup with a camera tripod to make pointing the antenna easier. Note the angle meter from a local hardware store which measures the elevation angle of the antenna.

AO-85 (Fox-1A) U/V Mode FM Cube Satellite
AO-85 (Fox-1A) U/V Mode FM Cube Satellite

This setup worked great for making FM contacts through AO-85 (Fox-1A), a  U/V mode FM EasySat. We used the 1.0 station on multiple occasions including Field Day 2016 and several of our club members used it to make their first satellite contacts. The Full-Duplex HT allowed us to hear our own signal coming back from the satellite which was an important tool to help with aiming the antenna properly. The ELK Dual-Band antenna is also a good choice because it uses a single feed point and a single polarization for both the 2m and 70cm bands.

Portable Satellite Station Team Operating Approach
1.0 Station Team Operating Approach

We used the team operating approach outlined above. This worked especially well for new folks who had not made a satellite contact before as it enabled each of the three team members involved in making the contact to focus on a specific part of the contact. We used orange plastic tent stakes to make AOS, Time of Closest Approach, and EOS to mark headings for each satellite pass. Small flashlights used at the stakes made them glow for night-time passes.

We certainly had a lot of fun with our 1.0 Satellite Station and I expect that we’ll continue to use it. As we gained a little experience with AO-85, we decided that we wanted to build a more capable Portable Satellite Station which we could use to operate with linear transponder satellites and which included a tracking system and better antennas. I know from experience with our home satellite station that DX contacts are possible using higher altitude linear transponder satellites like FO-29.

We would also like to be able to use APRS and other digital modes through satellites as well as receive SSTV pictures from space.

These goals have become the basis for building our Portable Satellite Station 2.0. More on the new station in Part 2 of this series. Other articles in the series include:

You may also be interested in the satellite station at our home QTH. You can read more about that here.

73,

Fred (AB1OC)

Radio Amateurs Developing Skills Worldwide