Boy Scout - Field Day with Skeet & Radio Fun

I'm back home after a wet, wet weekend.  The weather guys all week long said, "Beautiful weather - upper 50's during the day and possible rain late Sunday afternoon."

Well, they were partially right - Saturday afternoon the temp did warm up to the upper 50's.  However, around 1am on Sunday morning, the downpour that arrived was not very nice :(  Eventually, the tent decided to perform the same function as a river and little rivers flowed through.  There is just nothing like a wet sleeping back to ruin an otherwise pleasant sleep!

Anyway, Saturday was a really nice day - the Scouts had a great time shooting skeet; this year we only shot around 4,000 shells - down from 5,000 last year.  My youngest son ended up shooting 250 shells, has a HUGE bruise on his right shoulder and completed the Shooting Merit Badge requirements by hitting 39/50 skeet!  He (and I) was very excited.

I set up a radio station on Saturday morning and really had a great day!  I took my Icom IC-7000 and Buddipole with me.  The first thing I wanted to do was check in to the Central Virginia 6m Net (50.215) that run every day at 7am and 8am.  The Buddipole aluminum tubing was pretty chilly in the AM as the temp was around 35 degrees or so.  I managed to get the Buddipole set up with a 6m dipole configuration and I heard Ralph (WA4FEG) calling for check-in's to the net!  I was very excited!

(A note on the Buddipole configuration - if you decide to pick on up - you MUST own a antenna analyzer of some sort.  It's just not an option to try with your radio - there is so much variation in locations, coil tap locations, and antenna whip length that you start each band "excercise" in the "general ballpark" and spend a bit of time trying to find a good resonant config.  Takes some time, but I can't imagine how'd I accomplish it with a analyzer!)

Rig Setup at Scout Camp

I used the battery power from the car as the power source.  I had forgotten that I need to run the car when using the IC-7000 on full power - but remembered VERY quickly when I keyed up to check-in to the 6m net.  My IC-7000 immediately power cycled, I jumped out of the chair and started the car, and then tried to check in again - this time success!!!

Buddipole - Set up for 6m configuration

Field Day Setup

My youngest son came on over to visit later in the morning.

My Assistant - Will

 I made a few contacts during the day with folks around the US, Portugal, and heard quite a few from Europe, Canada, Australia, and Mexico - quite a variety.  I had about 8 - 10 scouts talk to other hams during the day; it was pretty fun for everybody involved!  When the day had about ended, I had the opportunity to share a bit of detail with 3 boys who seemed quite interested in obtaining their Tech license - I'll have to follow up with them later on and see if the interest remains.

So, other than some crappy, late Sat night rain, and a cold - it was a great field day!

73 de KJ4WLH (reporting from a nice, dry QTH!)

6m loop problem - BIOLOGICAL!!!

Wow, I guess I just live and learn...

I few weeks, perhaps months now I suppose, my 6m loop stopped being resonant on 50.125.  Really weird - I mean, it looked fine and was hanging right where it had been for a while and I hadn't done ANYTHING with it except use it.  I really didn't understand what was going on.

So, last weekend I dropped the antenna and tried to re-adjust it so that it would be resonant (again!) on 50.125 +/-.  It was really strange; I'd tune/adjust it, raise it up 20' or so, think that I'd just about got it and then it would change on me.  It was really frustrating.  So, I adjusted it "one last time" and hauled it up into the air.

Wouldn't you know; it wouldn't tune on my 9100!  My 7600 would tune it up, but that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me.  I used my antenna analyzer and it was around 3:1 match!!!  WHAT??!!??  ARGHH!!

(In case you haven't followed my rants recently, I've have a bad run of radio luck...)

Time passes...  And now it's this afternoon - beautiful day and I have about an hour to kill until my next activity kicks up; sounds like a good time to take a look at the 6m loop problem.  So, I dropped the antenna again, got out the M2 6m loop PDF and adjusted all the parts to the specs in the PDF.  HOWEVER, when I was banging on the metal trying to shift parts around, ants started crawling out of the aluminum tubing!  A LOT of ANTS - I mean, tons!!!  How strange?  Anyway, I kept on making noise and gave them a little while to clear out.

I went back later and it seemed like they'd moved on - I guess most of them did anyway.  So I hauled the antenna back up in the air and guess what - 1.2:1 match :)

My "moral of the story is this", there is always a reason - it just might be stranger than what you think it is!

73 de KJ4WLH