I want to thank everyone who helped with Winter Field Day 2024. NCRC operated 1O phone only (1 station, outdoors) this year instead of the usual 2O phone & CW. We completed 748 HF Contacts, 1 satellite QSO, and sent and received 1 Winlink Message. We did not have the best weather this year. Weather was fine on Saturday, but Sunday was raining all day and cold. However, it was nice and cozy in ticket booth shack. Midnight to 8 am we had no operators so we had to shut down the station. Again, Thank You to all.
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Dave Neal W2DAN
Category Archives: Satellite
WFD 2023 – It’s a wrap!
24 continuous hours of W1SYE ops at Glen Park concluded at 2:00pm Sunday, January 29th. 45 minutes later, HF station, tent, antenna, generator and all ancillary equipment was stowed away for next year. Many hands make light work!
Roughly 925 QSOs were made using phone, CW and digital modes. Nine bands were worked: 160m, 80, 40, 20, 15, 6, 2, 70cm and 2.4 GHz. Just for good measure (and bonus points), three SSB SATCOM contacts were thrown in as well.
The weather fully cooperated this year with a high of 52F around 2:00pm Saturday and a low of 37F about dawn Sunday. Contrast this with temps in the low teens with 2 feet of snow on the ground reported by one VT station.
Thanks to all who participated in any way, shape, or form. 73
Winter Field Day
Winter Field Day has just a few more hours before it will be in the log, but it’s been a good event six years in a row for W1SYE. The plan of using two ladder-line fed non-resonant antennas ran into a bit of a snag Saturday morning, as it was not possible to tune them using the Johnson Matchbox. Some adjusting of the feedline length rectified that problem, and the two transmitter operation was underway by 14:00L. The SSB tent would be on the air for 24 hours, while the CW station would be split between CW and Digital operation. We also had a satellite station (Sunday morning) that made a single contact to obtain the 1500 point bonus.
Life was fine until Saturday night when storms came through the area with hard rain (a bit over an inch) and wind, but they cleared out before midnight At least that kept the temp in the 40s. Also hard to believe that for six years in a row the weather has been warm and mostly sunny for WFD (easy for someone who didn’t show up until Sunday morning to say). Winter is coming, for sure, but hasn’t arrived in Rhode Island yet.
The SSB Tent is in the center (you can see the feedline running up in the air to one of the dipoles) with the all important Porta-Potty and CW station to the left
A view looking at the green-stick holding the end of the 2nd dipole. Taken from the location of the satellite station
The satellite station was on the air for 1 contact only — Computer for Doppler correction and rig are in the truck. Power is from a solar-charged Bioenno LiFePO4 battery. The antenna, an Arrow crossed beam is visible outside the side window (mounted on a camera tripod)
Amateur Radio’s FIRST Geosynchronous Satellite
Several milestones were reached at the same time when Qatar’s OSCAR-100 (QO-100) was placed into geosynchronous orbit. First it is the 100th orbiting amateur radio satellite. Second, it is the first for Qatar. Third, it is the first geosynchronous amateur radio satellite.
The bad news is for those of us in North America is that we are outside the footprint of the satellite, which was positioned to service Asia, Europe and Africa (I don’t know that there would have been an orbital slot available in this part of the world).
But we can listen to what is going on, including the 400 bps data downlink (which hasn’t been heard since AO-40 days in 1999) at 10489.800 MHz. One of the ground stations has a SDR receiver setup online. The link is below. Please note that when too many users are online you won’t be able to start the sound, but the waterfall is still running.
Here a link to an online SDR that can be used to listen to AO-100 remotely: https://eshail.batc.org.uk/nb/
Screen cap of Remote SDR tuned to QO-100
Here is an audio recording of G0API calling CQ on QO-100. John is using 1.2 watts output to a 90 cm dish (3 feet in diameter).
Winter Field Day Underway
Right on schedule at 14:00 EST, W1SYE was on the air for Winter Field Day from Glen Park in Portsmouth. Willy W1LY and helpers made short work of the setup, and had two ladder line antennas in the trees, and two tents setup for operation by noon. There was some concern about HF noise from a new generator, and the noise went away when it was swapped out. And as you might expect there was a scramble to get the logging computers up and going.
Two tents and two simple multiband antennas
Things were working well later this afternoon. Reverse Beacon Network spots indicated that the CW tent was putting out a fine signal
The gang is busy on phone during WFD — that’s a new tech (waiting for license) at the mic
Bob WB4SON made a satellite (only one allowed) with N1FD who was 4O NH (4 transmitters Outdoors in New Hampshire). The first satellite pass happened 13 minutes after the contest began, and the contact was in the log as soon as the satellite was above the horizon.
Satellite Antenna (crossed 2m/70cm beam)
2m/70cm all-mode radio, laptop to correct Doppler, and 30 AH Battery inside truck (warm)