more pictures

Field Day 2004 was just fantastic here in Ann Arbor. The weather was perfect
(although a bit cool late Saturday night), band conditions were great, and we
had an awful lot of fun.

Our club held FD 2004 at Domino’s Farms
again this year. Domino’s Farms is the headquarters of Domino’s Pizza, and really
a perfect location for Field Day. We commandeer a hilltop there for our operations.

The highlights of this year’s Field Day included:

• Three HF stations, two working phone and one working CW. I operated for
  two or three hours, splitting my time between one of the phone stations and
  the CW station.
• Computerized logging in each of the HF stations. We weren’t networked though,
  so the phone stations had to be careful about not operating on the same band.
  This was usually apparent, however, by the interference level.
• A VHF station, with satellite capability. Unfortunately, we weren’t able
  to hit any of the satellites. We did make quite a few 6m QSOs, though.
• A Get On the Air (GOTA) station. Our GOTA station was equipped with a Yaesu
  FT-897 connected to a G5RV Junior antenna. We put the station on our public
  information table so that visitors could get a good feel for what Field Day
  was all about. I spent a lot of time being the control operator for the GOTA
  station. We didn’t make 100 contacts and get our 100 bonus points, but we
  did have nearly a dozen people made their first HF contact. That was pretty
  cool.
• A HUGE antenna farm. The farm included an 80/40 full wave loop antenna,
  single-band verticals for 15m and 20m, an 80-10 multiband vertical, a 10/15/20
  multiband vertical, a BuddiPole, a couple of G5RVs feeding automatic antenna
  tuners, a half rhombic for 80m, a 6m beam, and a 2m/440MHz combo for working
  satellites. While they all seemed to be effective, the 80m loop gave us a
  very big signal on 75m early Sunday morning. In an hour and a half, i made
  about 125 contacts using that antenna.
• the RF Cafe, which provided all the nourishment required to keep operations
  humming;
• public information tabe (100 bonus points!) to meet and greet visitors;
  and a
• a visit from Doug Cox, our section emergency coordinator (100 bonus points!).

From an operations point of view, we did very well, racking up more than 600
phone contacts and more than 500 CW contacts. More information on that Tim KT8K
merges the computer logs and pounds in the contacts logged on paper.

Thanks to everyone who made Field Day a success!

Pictures (more to follow!)

The crew just before 2pm Saturday. In the rear is Jeff W8SGZ, Bruce W8BBS, Al,
Tom WB8COX, Tom N8AMX, Steve WB8WSF, Dave WB4SBE, and Mark W8FSA. In front,
Jim N8GNQ, Tim KT8K, Joe KC8VSB, Ed AB8OJ, Staci KC8WYA, and Dan KB6NU.

Here’s a good shot of the station layout. The first tent was Jeff’s phone station,
the second tent the CW station, the third tent the VHF station, and the white
van housed the second phone station. The GOTA station was on the public information
table, not in the picture.