Farm Life: ARRL Field Day 2023

Just a quick look at AA1F and my 2B ENY Field Day from our farm in Upstate NY.

The generator is running under the blue tarp. We got lucky, but rain had been predicted for much of the weekend. Most of it missed us fortunately! We did decide not to put up the military mast with the 6M beam due to the threat of thunderstorms. There was a small amount of lightning without audible thunder late Saturday night.

That is an 80M OCF dipole stretched over the raised beds, from the mast lashed to the cargo trailer to the tree-lined windbreak between the fields. The wire end that you cannot see snapped near the end insulator as we were hoisting it into the tree line. I was able to tie a simple bowline knot in the end and get it on the air. There is a 2M/70CM fiberglass antenna on the top of the mast as well. And the 40M OCF was in the trees at the property line.

AA1F is operating on my Yaesu FT-891A. I never really told the story on here, but, coming back from a SOTA one day, I ran over his backpack, and subsequently his entire radio kit, including his 891A. Luckily AA1F was not in the backpack at the time! His tuner was crushed, the LiFePo battery was severely damaged. And the transceiver had a giant dent on its top lid.

You can see the power cables (yellow) and LMR400 coax coming in through the radio. I am on the Yaesu FT-991A which also gives me 2 meters. I made a single VHF FM contact.

We drove in to the farm from Boston on Saturday, and after a long-planned obligation, set up the radios. Not surprisingly, we were running a little late and did not get on the air until about 4:30pm. But the two stations were networked, and working great together with an ethernet cable and N1MM software. I ran mostly CW. FT8 was causing a lot of interference with AA1F’s transceiver, despite the band pass filters.

In total we logged 264 contacts as KX1Q 2B ENY. What a great time!

KM1NDY