ARRL Field Day 2021 – The Reemergence

This title is disingenuous. The Sci-Tech Amateur Radio Society (STARS) did actually have a proper 2A ARRL Field Day in 2020. But after a year of online radio club meetings, the fact that we were opening the event back up to the public was a big deal. In fact, Field Day June 26 and 27 was to be the grand reopening of STARS’ parent organization, New England Sci-Tech (NEST).

Upfront, I want to thank Barbara KC1KGS, Steve KC1MWF, Barry K1OPK, and Dan W1DAN (who I do not have a single picture of at this event) for use of their photos. If you look in the right hand corner of the pics, you can see who took what. If you see nothing, I took it. I want to say too if I left someone out of these pics or this story, or mess up something, drop me a line and I’ll fix it! I am going on memory here, so help me out! These are also my thoughts and recollections on Field Day. Want anything official about STARS or NEST? Head over to their website!

It is well known that all good Field Days start with a truck full of cinderblocks… and so our STARS Field Day 2021 story begins… (sit down with a coffee for this…its a long one even for me!)

As Field Day Coordinator for STARS, I arrived promptly at the NEST parking lot in Natick MA at 10am for the 9am set-up start time I had announced. The crew was already long gathered looking a tad bit annoyed with my tardiness. Or hungry. Most likely both. Below you can see Bruce N9JBT, Stu W1SHS, Derek AK1WI, Charlie WA3ITR, Robb K2MZ, George KG1YNA, and Jon KC1MII. You will notice I am in the green 2020 Field Day Shirt. You will notice I am ALWAYS in the green Field Day shirt. This is because despite having a giant green van that can hold lots of stuff (to be referred to as Limey from here out), I forgot to bring another shirt for the weekend. Shhhh…I highly doubt anyone will notice….

Things started being moved out of Limey. Such as masts, tents, antennas, coax, radios, extension cords. The picture below has now acquired Barry K1OPK and Barbara KC1KGS (my Radio Club bestie!)

Bruce N9JBT was in charge of the Get-On-The-Air (GOTA) station. Below you can see his crew popping up the Qube tent in front of the entrance to NEST. In fact, my own acquisition of an ice fishing tent was inspired by this model. Yuri KC1LNQ and Bob K5TEC (the proprietor of NEST) are two of the new faces below.

Bruce N9JBT brought a multi-band end fed antenna (one that was electrically shortened with an in-line coil) on its maiden voyage. Strung up on the roof of the building with the help of Barry K1OPK and Mark KC1MNF, a quick check of the SWR showed a pleasing 5×10⁶ to 1 ratio. Fortunately for the Get-On-The-Airers, it turned out to be the coaxial cable that was impedence-ly challenged…an easy fix with a new run of cable.

Here you can see Bruce precariously dropping the bad coax off the roof while Barry K1OPK captured the moment…

Jay KA1JAY (one of the many of us whose name appears in our call signs…Go Call Name Team!) and Yuri KC1LNQ show off the innards of the GOTA tent. You are seeing an ICOM-7610 with an LDG tuner attached to a large monitor, complete with a desk fan for comfort.

In fact, at one point I think the electrical draw of this station was enough to trip the circuit breakers of the Honda 2000 watt quiet generator (also Bruce N9JBT’s), because Jay KA1JAY ran up to me in a panic declaring “my generator keeps breaking can you fix it?!” And I “fixed” it by taking the eco-throttle feature off and letting the thing run full steam ahead! Jon KC1MII and Jay KC1JAY are holding down 20M below. Rumor has it, Rusty K1FVK had also been hanging around this tent.

No radio non-contest contest would be complete without an appearance by one of the area radiosport superstars, Leandra AF1R. In fact, Brendan NW1S, Jeff AC1JR, and I were bemoaning the fact that Leandra snuck in and beat us to the first activation of several of the new Parks-On-The-Air activation sites that cropped up in Massachusetts recently…were your ears burning Leandra?! 🙂

So, during the beginning of Field Day 2021 set-up, Jeremy KB1REQ was left blissfully to his own devices, relatively unnoticed, and hiding in the main operating tent. And by hiding, I mean setting up the entire computer logging network, the two SSB radio stations, the 2M station, and incorporating my 6M digital station and Robb K2MZ’s CW station into a cohesive 3A Field Day operation. Not to mention running all of the electrical and grounding, including properly grounding the generators to copper ground rods. (He did have to use my pipe wrench as a sledge hammer, for what its worth. A fact so potentially worthy of a running inside joke some day that I felt the need to mention it here first.) Oh yeah, and it was essentially all of his own equipment and tools. I never make any bones about the fact that Field Day, as STARS knows it, would not exist without KB1REQ.

The ICOM 7300 with only its internal tuner presided over the 40M (and 15M) station.

The ICOM 746PRO with an LDG tuner ran 80M (and 10M).

Bandpass filters were deployed to try to minimize the interference between stations. Keying up either SSB station caused a tremendous amount of interference with the CW station both within and between bands. Given that Robb K2MZ was our top performer, willing to operate all night long, and relatively indefatigable on CW, we need to sort this out for the next time. We are theorizing that the antenna placement needs to be more strategic and we need to move Robb far away from the main operating tent.

We used N1MM+ logging software networked between all radio stations except the GOTA.

The deal was that Jeremy KB1REQ was largely in charge of the radio station set-up, whereas I was in charge of the antennas. We got Robb’s K2MZ multi-band endfed (probably a halfwave with a 49:1 unun?) up in the trees first. A man of many talents, turns out Robb’s dad was a tree man, and Rob could professionally throw an arborist weight with accuracy about 1200 feet in the air.

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With the balun on the ground and its free end around 40 feet up on a tree limb, the CW antenna was all set. Combine that with Robb’s ICOM 7300 go-box and newly networked computer, Robb was on the air nearly at the official start of Field Day.

STARS’ newly minted club president, Derek AK1W1 and his wonderful wife Marge provided a pizza lunch as double duty to feed hungry Field Day’ers, as well as celebrate the Grand Reopening of New England Sci-Tech. We all dug in and enjoyed the delicious pie!

Then it was back to the antennas… At the 11th hour, Derek AK1WI and Charlie WA3ITR decided to throw together a 2-element 40M wire beam antenna that they read about in QST (June 2021, page 30). It essentially was a 40M dipole with a 1:1 choke in the usual central coaxial connection position, attached to perpindicular pvc pipes on each end, that were then attached to a parallel wire that served as a beam director for the dipole driven element. It would hang like a big hammock, just without any cloth fabric between the rectangular supports. Jon KC1MII, Steve KC1MWF, Derek AK1WI, Barbara KC1KGS, and Charlie WA1ITR are constructing it below.

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As soon as we strung the monster between trees, it snapped. Luckily Jon KC1MII used some ninja boy scout skills and reattached the broken wire. Bill N1WEN, Mark KC1MNF, Charlie WA1ITR, and Derek AK1WI pose by their work.

A simple modification by a Mr. Longarms painter pole in a PVC sleeve inserted into a bucket of concrete with two cinder blocks holds the antenna sufficiently off of the ground. Y’all know I love when Mr. Longarms (#3 in this case) makes an appearance!

Testing of the 40M wire beam showed an easily tunable SWR between 1.5 and 2 across the 40M band.

Well, the military mast was next. Half of the joy of putting this up is trying to convince people that it is actually doable. It consists of multiple metal tubes that mate into one another. It has a little pulley arm that slips over the top like a hat. The key to this is to set up the entire thing while its lying on the ground. This includes attaching guy lines using the special guys rings that it come with and making sure that the rope is tied around the pulley arm like a flagpole.

Once this is done, simply get a group of people together and push it up.

At this point, everyone is still quite skeptical that this is going to work. Don’t fret! It will!

Now you finally realize what 800 pounds of cinderblocks are for! Once the base and legs are secured with blocks and the mast is guyed out, it’s time to hoist the balun of the 80M off center fed dipole antenna up the pulley.

Voila! A mesmerizing feat of Field Day beauty! Gosh I love putting up antennas!

Ok, this is just here because its a cute picture of me, Derek AK1WI, and Jeremy KB1REQ. I am sure we are doing something constructive…

Oh yeah! Putting up the vhf station! You need to look at this post if you want to know more about my tow hook and mast. George KG1YNA is holding tight while I wait for Jeremy’s analysis of the gamma match of this never-before-used 6M beam.

Good to go! A fiberglass Diamond X30A dual band 140/70 antenna sits on the top, with the Arrow 6M 4-element beam underneath, I forego the 2M beam after a bit of internal debate.

Limey’s lookin’ purty with his newest attachment! At least from this angle…

In fact though, this antenna configuration was compared to a very famous cartoon Christmas tree…I’ll leave it up to you guys to figure out which one… (For what its worth, I am going to work on stabilization of this mast and have already ordered some products recommended by Dan N1DFL that I hope arrive in time for the July VHF contest). Yes, that is the mast tipping over like its had a few too many special eggnogs….

Regardless, I was able to get on the air and get WSJT-X running on 6M. Even made a few contacts. Here you can see our excited team of FT8’ers. In fact, I don’t think I have ever seen Barbara KC1KGS happier about an operating mode…I swore I heard her shriek in delight when we connected! Rob WA1UMU is giving me pointers. There is a lot of work to be done to have a successful 6M phone and digital operation for next time though. On the other hand, pumping 100 watts through the 2M omidirectional antenna let us successfully reach a summit activation of North Pack Monadnock Mountain, some 60 miles away.

Now get this. Stu W1SHS snuck in his fancy dancy Kenwood HT and laptop and was able to blast off digital traffic via winlink to ARRL EMA Section Manager Tom Walsh K1TW as well as to 10 others acquiring us 200 bonus points! Way to go Stu!

Bill KA1MOM (seen below with Derek AK1WI) set up his ARRL Field Day information booth. More bonus points!

And still MORE bonus points! A representative of FEMA, i.e. an agency served by the Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES), stopped by to say hello.., and we got proof!

Jon KC1MII has been getting in the habit of setting up short wave listening stations to be able to hear the radios when operators wear headphones.

Here you can see his newest Malahit (-like) SDR receiver and MLA-30 Megaloop antenna. I wish I spent a little more time playing with this. I keep thinking that we should amplify the sound so that non-operators can hear what is going on.

Field Day is off and running! The visitors are starting to swing by! Dan N1DFL set us up with a sweet beverage station including a giant pot of coffee!

The antenna jungle looks pretty impressive. Okay, who I am kidding. I LOVE THE ANTENNA JUNGLE!!!!!!!!!

And by night fall, we are still standing, and still going strong… Evening dinner brought platefuls of Mexican cuisine and the Collinses! Mark Sr KC1LBH, Mark Jr KC1LBI, and the so-dubbed K-Diane joined us for the festivities. Ted W1OG also stopped by. I was willing to March to the end of the Earth to retrieve the correct enchilada, and lo-and-behold, it almost ended up poured out over the trunk of KB1REQ’s car! But alas! A delicious – if squishy – dinner did eventually make its way back to the Field Day participants and we all celebrated the day’s events.

As night rolled on, the stayers stayed and the goers goed. It probably should be mentioned that George KG1YNA and Jon MC1MII called a box truck home for the night. I had Limey. Robb K2MZ somehow slept in his truck. And Bruce N9JBT was in the lap of luxury with his dear wife Rosanne in their truck camper with their two kitties.

And then the cops showed up. Mark Sr KC1LBH sent the Natick PD to check on us in the middle of the night. Even though we no longer needed these bonus points, it would have counted (at least according to me, ahem! This was a contested point…) as a visit by an official of an agency served by ARES. I swear, Jon KC1MII and Bruce N9JBT look a bit nervous! Just kidding! We were actually all really proud to show off our operation! Thank you Natick PD for keeping an eye out on us, and we hope you enjoyed your brief visit!

The food crew started early with Jon KC1MII making the best grilled bacon I have ever eaten. Barbara KC1KGS brought a full continental breakfast.

By midmorning, Dan N1DFL was cooking a chili feast out of his tailgate.

For a few moments, we slowed down a bit and just enjoyed each other’s company. And some darn fine Dan N1DFL coffee!

Steve KC1MWF was so busy taking pictures, I could hardly find him in any of them. I even had a chance to sneak on the GOTA station and try to make a 20M scheduled contact with Bree KM1CRO and Tate K1MKD who were celebrating Field Day elsewhere. I think the cell phone qso counts!

Every so often, Bob K5TEC would make his way down to the tent. Here is talking with Ted W1OG. Even Steve KC1NJK and Nolan KC1IEO swung by.

Barbara KC1KGS, Charlie, WA1ITR, me, Derek AK1WI, Steve KC1MWF, Stu W1SHS, and Jeremy KB1REQ pose below with ARRL New England Division Vice Director Phil Temples K9HI. Thanks for joining us Phil!

So, there you have it! I told you this would be long. But that is the STARS 2021 ARRL Field Day from my vantage point. I read somewhere that it takes 50 hours in someone’s company before you can truly become their friend. If you think about it, that is being around someone an hour a week for a year. Or, alternatively, it is two Field Days.

There was something very special about this post-pandemic event. We came together as old friends happy to see each other this round. For many of us, our fifty hours together have come and gone. It really, truly, felt like our Field Day this year, didn’t it? And for those of you who haven’t been around that long with us, well, one Field Day, and you are now halfway there!

And Field Day stresses us. Physically, mentally. Think about those pictures you are seeing. It is a lot of work! Hard work in really hot weather. Field Day is supposed to be an exercise in emergency communications. It is difficult to dispute that it achieves that goal. We did great this year. I am already looking forward to doing better next year. We are all on the same page now…I can’t help but think the sky’s the limit! So, come join us. The more the merrier!

As always,

KM1NDY