Zach, KFØLQE, and George, WBØCNK, at the GOTA Station
The impressive collective skill set and know-how of club members was much in evidence the weekend of June 24 and 25 as they participated in ARRL Field Day 2023 at Ensor Park and Museum and elsewhere.
View event pictures at: About Us / Picture Gallery / Field Day
The theme for this year's event was "Celebrating Amateur Radio Excellence," a nod to the many highly-competent hams across the United States who continue to serve their communities in various ways and stand ready as always to lend their technical talents in an emergency to help with the communication needs of others.
"The overall event was quite successful," Jim Andera, KØNK, reported recently. "Several new hams or soon-to-be hams had an opportunity to assist in the setting-up or tear-down of the stations and antennas, which is a valuable part of the hands-on learning experience that Field Day offers. Plus they got to observe and even participate in the operation and logging of contacts."
According to Andera, "propagation was not favorable to support operation on the 10-meter band," but the 15-meter to 80-meter bands were "usable."
Information supplied by Jeff Darby, KSØJD, club president, indicates that our hams made:
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325 digital contacts
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147 CW (Morse code) contacts
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111 SSB (Single Sideband) contacts
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There were a total of 583 contacts on 100 watts and 10 on 10 watts or less (QRP).
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Our hams worked stations in 47 states and three foreign countries, according to Darby.
Andera said the club, using its call sign of KSØKS, operated in Class 3A, meaning it had three transmitters on the air simultaneously, operated off of emergency power (i.e., a generator) and "in a portable set-up," and employed what amounted to a "group effort" in the search for contacts worth points.
The three transmitters were a digital station positioned in the club trailer that utilized an Icom 7300 transceiver linked to a 40-meter end-fed antenna, a CW station in the trailer that utilized an Icom 746 transceiver that was hooked up to a Cushcraft vertical antenna part of the time and an off-center-fed 80-meter dipole antenna the rest of the time, and an SSB station located on the front porch of the Ensor home that utilized a wire horizontal delta-loop antenna almost 400 feet in length.
There were three other stations in operation during the weekend and they were a Get On The Air (GOTA) station positioned on the east porch, a 6-meter station that was set up just to the north of the parking lot, and a digital station that was set up near the Peg Barn.
Andera reported that the club's youngest member, Zach, KFØLQE, was able to connect with several other hams under the supervision of a more experienced operator at the GOTA station.
But those who manned the 6-meter station had a rough go of it, he related, as that hoped-for band opening on 6 meters "unfortunately never occurred."
The digital station saw Howard Cripe, NØAZ, earn some extra points for the club by running a low-power station using battery power and solar power.
Elsewhere, in Edgerton, Del Sawyer, KØDDS, operated from the vintage camper at his three-acre "antenna farm" and attributed the contacts he made to the club.
According to Andera, all of the stations at Ensor remained on the air during daylight hours and into the early evening on the 24th. And according to George McCarville, WBØCNK, he and Marty Peters, KEØPEZ, club secretary-treasurer, kept the CW station active until 1:40 a.m. on the 25th while Larry Hall, KDØRIU, club vice president, kept the digital station active just as long. McCarville and Peters then spent the rest of the night at Ensor to ensure that no unwanted visitors walked off with any of the equipment, sleeping as much as they could.
Speaking of visitors, Andera also reported that "quite a number of visitors" dropped by Ensor during Field Day and that all of them were given the chance to tour the club's set-up for the event. According to him, the visitor log recorded 31 operators and visitors, a figure that likely was on the low side because some people never registered their presence.
The visitors included Ron Cowan, KBØDTI, the ARRL section manager for Kansas, who ran the weekly Kansas Phone Net from the trailer the morning of the 25th, Dick Whitehouse, a former student of Marshall Ensor and a former ham (WAØDPC), and other members of his family, a man associated with the Linda Hall Library at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and members of a Kansas City area Model A Ford club who traveled to Ensor in two antique cars.
In the way of sustenance, hams enjoyed hot dogs for lunch on the 24th and the 25th, feasted on roasted chicken and "some great side dishes" the evening of the 24th, and were served scrambled eggs and sausage for breakfast on the 25th.