[amsat-bb] Field Day

[David Rush]

I ran W4CVY for our club's Field Day effort from west/central Georgia.

I've had mixed results in past years making at least one contact for the 
100 point bonus.  I've been slowly improving my gear every year.

This year I finally got circ-polarized crossed Yagis for 2m and 70cm (M2 
LEO pack purchased through the Amsat store), got fully automatic 
tracking working (K3NG/Arduino controller for Yaesu G-5500 rotor setup), 
and figured out more of Sat32PC.  Discovered in pre-FD testing that the 
power amp in my FT-736R was toast, but 1-2 watts it was putting out was 
fine with my 70cm power amp.  Ran the 2m side barefoot (no amp).

Made 3 contacts total, all SSB on FO-29.  SO-50 was just chaos.

Heard and tried both AO-73 and AO-7, but was never able to find myself 
and get my uplink calibrated in Sat32PC.  On AO-73 I went manual a 
couple of times, keying down my CW key and sweeping my transmit with the 
big knob.  I quickly found myself, but was never able to successfully 
translate the result over to Sat32PC CAT control uplink calibration and 
hear myself on SSB.

Things I know I can improve on: operating Sat32PC (powerful program, but 
not easy to learn to drive well) and need to check the accuracy of my 
rotor control (looks good at 0 azimuth, but looks about 10 degrees off 
at 180).

David, ky7dr

On 2015-06-28 20:00, Paul Stoetzer wrote:
> How did everyone's Field Day go? Heard quite a bit of QSOs made. Heard
> quite a bit of struggling too!
>
> Weather was awful, so I was just operating from the grounds of my
> apartment building here in DC. I managed 20 QSOs with 5 watts, which
> wasn't easy with how overloaded the transponders were with strong
> signals.
>
> Next year maybe I'll help out a local club on the sats.
>
> 73,
>
> Paul, N8HM
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