Glendora Emergency Response Communications

Field Day Planning Continues, Part 2

Jun 22, 2004

April 27, 2004

Before I begin, I would like to thank Andy, W6LDS for the wonderful antenna workshop at the last meeting. It was great to learn that the copper J-pole antennas were designed specially to be tuned to our emergency net frequency. I hope we will have an opportunity to hear a particularly good signal coming from the antenna built by Dave, KG6TPP tonight!

Field Day, June 26, 2004 is getting closer! We are excited about the event, which will be a first for our ERC group. I appreciate the help of the hams who have volunteered their time and talents so far. Field day promises to be a great experience and an opportunity for many of us to try our skills on the high frequency bands.

Since all equipment will be run by emergency power, we all need to be careful when using temporary power sources--whether batteries, mobile battery connections or generator-driven power supplies--it is all too easy to damage your rig with reversed polarity, wrong voltage or transient spikes. To protect your rig, I suggest equipping all your power cables with reverse-polarity, over-voltage and transient spike protection. Maybe Andy, W6LDS can advise us of the proper equipment or simple devices we can build or purchase for this.

With the equipment that will be available we should have the capability to operate on 80 or 75 meters, 40 meters, 20 meters, 10 and 6 meters HF, along with the 2 meter VHF and 440 MHz UHF bands. Please contact Rob, KE6YGF to let him know your preferences for operating.

We are in need of 3 or four more pop-up canopies for field day and I would like to get them lined up as soon as possible. I have two already lined up. It probably will be very warm out in the lot. Also we need to borrow two large size ABC fire extinguishers for field day.

Other jobs we need volunteers for are the set up crew on Friday the 25th afternoon, and the take down and clean up crew on Saturday evening.

If you are interested in assisting with the barbeque preparation on Saturday afternoon, please get in touch with Roy, KG6RGD. I?’m sure he could use your help!

Also any suggestions or volunteers to help publicize Field Day should me made to Jonathan, KG6TPZ or Carolyn, KG6RFJ.

Back to the fun part, I know that on my first field day I was very nervous about calling other stations and I spent a lot of time just watching the experienced hams. We want you to have fun right away so I have prepared a ?“Field Day On-Air Operating Procedures?” that tells you step by step how to make contacts. If you e-mail me at cloudtracker@aol.com I will send you a copy or you can wait until the next meeting to get your copy.
Your comments and suggestions about Field Day are appreciated.

On other matters, our ERC group will participate at safety check points again this year at the Pioneer Day, which is set for Saturday, July 24 with the 5 k race beginning at 7:30 am at the main facility. This year maybe we can spot two hams at each of the five or six checkpoints. Following the race we will be maintaining our net control station throughout the day, so you are needed to help there too.

73 DE KF6DSA