Several members of the NC/East chapter of PVRC(the NC Contesters Club, NR3X) put together another small scale field day operation for 2008. Operating as N4PY, we built stations on the campus of Royal Elementary just south of Louisburg, NC. Our operations in the 3A class netted 1808 CW Q’s, 511 SSB Q’s, for a total of 2319 QSO’s and an expected score of just above 8800 points. (Note: Link to Carl, N4PY’s software site, the N4PY discussion group, and the eham review of the N4PY rig control software.)
The set up was moderately simple. All antennas were simple wires of one sort or another. For 2008 we choose to operate as 3A, with a full time 40m station, an 80m/20m station, and a 15m/10m/vhf station. The 15m/10m station turned out to be far more productive than we had any real reason to expect given the current sorry state of the sunspot cycle.
Left: 40m foreground, 80m/20m background Right: W4KAZ removing shade screen as W4MY works 15m
For antennas, we used a Vee beam(east/west) with 266 foot legs on 80m/20m. The 40m station relied on another east/west Vee beam with 200 foot legs, supplemented with a hastily constructed but poorly tuned 40m dipole aligned at 90 degrees to the favored direction of the Vee beam. The 15m and 10m antennas were simple dipoles. All antennas were constructed on site – a cause for concern as 1800z approached….!
We had the core group of operators, N4PY, N4YDU, W4KAZ […]
Continue reading Field Day 2008 as N4PY – The Story