Life’s swirl of events led me to be non-committal about FD with the usual suspects this year. Probably a good thing, given the way brown stuff keeps making sudden contact with the rotary impeller. Even the minimal home operation in lieu of a real event was in question as days grew shorter.
So 2015 FD was flying solo in the KazShack. [Some photos here] The twist to make it FD was to run the station on emergency power, class 1E. With enough ’round-too-its’ having been previously cashed in to assemble a portion of the battery set up desired, the battery op seemed feasible. Accumulated over the past year are a couple of 30w solar panels, a pair of well-matched deep cycle marine batteries, a decent charge controller, and assorted minor peripherals(cables, connections, etc). The original plan was to be ready for NC-QSOP earlier in the year. Brown Stuff vs Rotary Impeller. Brown Stuff won, no Qso party.
In field day spirit, I also hoisted an “emergency” field portable 40m/20m inv-V off of a fiberglass telescoping mast obtained from “The Mast Company” several years back. After collecting dust for these years, it occurred to me that it could fill a big unused space on the edge of the ‘wire-farm’, backed up very nicely by the 20m/40m reflectors in their permanent positions. This worked very well on both bands during FD, showing four or five S-units difference depending on conditions and the direction of the signals.
The 2015 FD Station:
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