1. LARC-FARL 2018 Field Day in Review
David Treharne
N8HKU
September 13, 2018

2. 2018 Field Day Facts Co-hosted with the Livonia Amateur Radio Club
LARC Field Day Chair: Mike Rudzki (N8MR)
FARL Field Day Chair: David Treharne (N8HKU)
June 23-24th, 2018
4A plus a Get On The Air station
Operated the full 24 hours this year from the former Webster Elementary School site on Lyndon in Livonia

3. The Results
40m was the workhorse band for the event again, with 20m coming in a respectable 2nd place.
80m was was well down from last year, due to no SSB activity on this band. The FARL SSB station stayed on 20m throughout the evening
A good showing on 15m, and even some contacts on 10m this year.
1 satellite contact
The GOTA contacts were way down from 61 last year to 4 this year.
Sunspot number for the month: 15.9, with 13.2 the month before. Sunspots dropped again in July down to 1.6

4. Summary versus prior years
Band CW
Phone
Dig
Total %
---- --
-----
--- 80
292
323
615 27 40
352
859 50
1,261 55 20 53
278
351 15 39 1 2 10 4 6 7
SAT
740
1,468 71
2,279
100
Band CW
Phone
Dig
Total %
---- --
-----
--- 80
157 6 40
388
1,061 12
1,461 51 20 68
923 33
1,024 36 15 91 10
121 4 46 5 57 2 25 1
SAT
750
2,035 61
2,846
100
CW contacts were back up this year, as the antenna issue from last year was resolved. Phone contacts way up, with 40m and 20m way up over prior years. Digital contacts were not as good, down by ½ from last year.

5. Best Score Ever! Beats 2014 score by 552 points!
Scoring: Big rise over 2017
2017 Bonus points
Description
Points
100% Emergency power
400
Media Publicity
100
Public Location
Public Information Table
NTS message to ARRL SM/SEC
W1AW Field Day Message
Formal NTS messages handled - No.=10
Satellite QSO completed
Natural power QSOs completed
Site Visit by invited served agency official
Youth participation 20
  Youth operators=1
  Youth participants=1
GOTA Bonus
Submitted via the Web 50
Educational activity
Social media
Safety officer
Total Bonus Points
1,670
Score Summary: CW
Digital
Phone
Total
Total QSOs
750 61
2039
Total Points
1500
122
3661
  Claimed Score = 7,322
Total Score:
8,992
Bonus Points:
100% Emergency power
Public Location
Formal message to ARRL SM/SEC
Formal messages handled - No.=
Satellite QSO completed
Natural power QSOs completed
Site Visit by invited served agency official
GOTA Bonus
Submitted via the Web
Social media
Total Bonus Points ,190
Score Summary:
CW Digital Phone Total
Total QSOs
Total Points Claimed Score = 5,626
*****Total: 6,816*******
Best Score Ever! Beats 2014 score by 552 points!
2018 Score: 8,992 points vs Score: 6816 points
32% rise in 2018.
40% increase in Bonus points, +30% contact points

6. N Site Layout- 2018 Edition Porta potty
The food tent is a white tent shelter, solid sides, can enclose the ends. Nearby are two picnic tables
RV Trailer
Digital Station antenna
Food
Red Lines are the antennas - N
Digital and GOTA Station antenna (Vertical)
Digital (LARC)
GOTA
SSB2
LARC SSB2 Antenna
SSB1- FARL
FARL SSB1 Antenna CW
CW Station Antenna: 80m quad

7. Our SSB Set-up Airstream Trailer from Tom Bray, W8TJB
Club Yaesu FT-991 HF Radio kit
Club G5RV antenna
Tom Bray’s 6m setup
Generator Bill Boyke, N8OZV
Solar power and battery back-up from David, N8HKU

8. LARC SSB LARC SSB: Tent again this year
Ran a G5RV antenna, only used 40m SSB

9. The CW Station setup Screen tent, side tarps, as needed
Full wave 80m Loop antenna, with 120 feet of 300 ohm ladder line

10. The GOTA Station setup RV Trailer(shared with digital station)
Alpha FMJ, a multi-band, based matched vertical antenna mounted on a tripod
LARC Radio
Only 4 contacts this year, but 2 were made by an under 18 year old amateur.

11. Digital Set-up Put together at the last moment by Chuck Reti, WV8A.
Using an FT897D radio and his Macintosh laptop
Started using an end-fed wire, but got better results sharing time on the Alpha FMJ vertical with the GOTA Station

12. Satellite Set-up
2 Eggbeater Antennas, on each end of the canopy, one on 70cm, the other on 2m.
Using an HT radio
Worked K2AA in SNJ, Southern New Jersey

13. Section Coverage 80 out of 83 sections worked Not Worked: Hawaii
Alaska
Northwest Territories
All three of these sections were not worked last year as well. (75 of 83 sections worked last year)

14. Most Sections worked (SSB and CW)
Eastern PA (163)
Virginia (150)
Ohio (138)
North Carolina (120)
Maryland/DC (113)

15. Contacts per Hour Graphic
Peak: 267 contacts per hour at 8pm (00:00 UTC)
Green: SSB. Blue: CW, White: Digital
Red: 40m, Green: 20m, Blue, 80m
Notice all of the Green: 20m was alive until well after midnight

16. The ARRL Bulletin
QST de W1AW Special Bulletin 11 ARLX011 From ARRL Headquarters Newington CT June 22, 2018 To all radio amateurs SB SPCL ARL ARLX011 ARLX W1AW Field Day Bulletin Don't let absent sunspots dictate your Field Day 2018 fun. It's time to quickly push the envelope and learn new skills. You do not need a 59 signal. Digital technologies, such as FT8, PSK31, MFSK, and RTTY offer opportunities to learn something, whether you have been licensed 1 month or 40 years.
There is no more effective tool for spreading the word about Amateur Radio than to use social media. Today almost everyone has a social media footprint. The use of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms is an easy way to let people know Amateur Radio is alive and well. Just use social media to promote your FD operations and earn bonus points. Refer to Field Day rule for more details and use #ARRLFD . Experience all the tools at your disposal and you will discover Field Day can be new a new zenith no matter how many times you have participated. Good luck and 73! NNNN

17. What went Right
We had good weather this Field Day. We had some rain, but it was mostly Saturday evening, and we did not need to use the air conditioner.
AirStream shelter for the SSB1 station: Tom Bray, W8TJB, was back this year with the shelter for us, and the 6m station. Dave brought a 6 ft table to run the HF station from, and that fit well, giving us plenty of space to operate and log from.
Food: Thanks for all the food. We had both meat and vegetarian options, and both went well. We had plenty of water.
No Network issues, as we did not run a network. We did have problems with the SSB laptop supplied by Dave, N8HKU, but everyone was able to log.
Generator: Bill Boyke's generator ran well the entire weekend, using about 15 gal of fuel over 24 hours, with just radios, computers, lights, and fans. No A/C was needed.
Bonus Points: Much better Bonuss point coverage this year.
Educational Presentation: David, N8HKU, put together an educational bonus this year. A link is on the FARL club website at:

18. What went Right- page 2
Teardown time: Everything went very smoothly in teardown. The Airstream was the last to leave at 4pm or so.
20m band: It did not shut down at night, even though we are at the bottom of the sunspot cycle. The SSB1 team made a lot of contacts before 2am.
Satellite contacts: We managed a single satellite contact, using the two eggbeater antennas, one for 2m, one for 70cm. These are not the best for a crowded Field Day experience on the satellites, but they worked. .
Message traffic: The NTS message traffic did occur, with maximum bonus points of 10 messages plus one to the Section Manager.
Youth participation: 2 contacts on the GOTA station were made by Luke Schwinn, KE8JOK.
Field Day Bulletin: We missed the bulletin on Saturday night, but got it copied on Sunday on both SSB1 and the Digital station.
SSB1 Speakers with the USB isolation: The USB isolator did a very good job keeping interference out of the speakers, a dramatic improvement over last year.
Headset isolation transformer: The isolation transformer on the headset kept out the feedback from RF.
New operator: Carl, KB4CWG, worked 20 contacts at the FARL SSB station and may now have the contesting bug. Congratulations!

19. What Can be Improved
The FARL SSB computer had issues and needed to restart the program several times in order to log or to get the computer to radio interface working again.
Still had ground loop problems, even with the USB isolator. But, isolating the computer power supply ground from the radio ground did help, and the system was more stable after that.
Scott, N3FJP, did not hear other reports that a computer would have file problems when stored to its local hard drive, so he had no help. I do suspect RF issues, as the problems appeared to go away after the computer ground was isolated from the radio ground.
The lack of network prevented the 40m station from working another band when 40m dried up on Sunday morning.
Perhaps we might tie in the two SSB stations in the future with a standard WiFi connection. At least these stations can connect. Need to figure out how to eliminate problems with file storage, of course.
GOTA station: Using a vertical antenna is not recommended for a GOTA, and sharing the antenna with the digital station did not work well. Recommend to eliminate the GOTA and invite operators to an existing station to operate.
Digital Station: The last minute set-up plus the use of the vertical antenna (which was much better than the end feed wire) did not result in very many contacts. Recommend using a G5RV like was done in 2017.

20. What Can be Improved
Did not try the 80m/160m as a Marconi: 20m was open past midnight through 2am, so the evening crew operated there. The experiment to try the G5RV as a Marconi for 80m and 160m was not done, although a nice ground radial system was deployed. By the time Dave, N8HKU, arrived in the morning and served breakfast, 80m was done, so there was no chance to try this out.
The result did make 20m a top band this year, but it left 100's of 80 contacts from being attempted had 323 SSB contacts on 80m, and 2017 had 279 contacts. When 20m and 40m had no new contacts to be made on Sunday, there was no chance to operate on 80m.
Recommendation: Try to have more operators available on the overnight or early morning shift. It is recommended to try the Marconi set up for next year and see what can be done, as the sunspot cycle will still be low in its conversion from Cycle 24 to Cycle 25.
Digital station contacts did not merge with the rest of the contacts. The digital station used a Mac, so another program was used. The ADIF file did not assign the Section correctly, so that information is missing from the master log. This was not needed for Field Day submission, but needed to be hand added post-event. It is best for all stations to run the N3FJP software.
The GOTA station ran a manual log, no computer. While they only had 4 contacts, the paper log did not include operator information, so the youth participation had to be figured out afterwards.

21. Recommendations for Next Year
See if we can find a workable wireless router to use to connect the two SSB stations together. It would allow more flexibility.
Investigate a club generator: As mentioned in the June pre-Field Day report, competitive inverter generators in the 2kW to 2.2kW range are now available for under $600. That would be quieter than the generator we used, and lighter. Many thanks to Bill Boyke for bringing it out, but he is retiring this year from Ford, so fortune may take him elsewhere.

22. Other Pictures from the Event
Tom, W8TJB, and Carl, KB4CWG, at the 6m station
Educational Presentation on Ground Loops
The Food Tent

23. 73 until next year!!
The Evening sky over the FARL SSB station, showing the Moon and Jupiter.