June 15, 2020….
The Saint Louis and Suburban Radio Club would like to cordially invite you to participate in the ARRL Field Day 2020 with us on June 27 and 28! Because we can’t safely operate like we have in the past, we are scheduling a number of activities to have fun even if we can’t be in the same physical location.
ARRL’s Field Day is an opportunity for everyone to develop, sharpen, and practice your skills in challenging conditions. This year, we’re encouraging and challenging you to set up and run your own radio station. If you don’t have a radio, see if you can find a partner that has an extra radio and operate as a team. The Field Day contest score results are due in July, and published in the QST magazine in December.
The rules for field day can be intimidating, so we’ve put together a Simplified Guide to Field Day. This document explains the rules in simple terms, helps you understand how to choose a class (based on location and power), what the constraints on those classes are, and how scoring works. If you need more details, please read the Official Rules (which also includes the General ARRL Rules). The goals for Field Day are to have fun, get on the air, and practice your skills. Don’t worry about mistakes. We learn more from mistakes than doing things successfully. To share your results, you’ll need a Cabrillo log that can be submitted both to the ARRL and optionally the SLSRC. Club member scores add together to create the club score to rank against other clubs – like a participation rating. To include your scores in our club result, use “The Saint Louis and Suburban Radio Club” when you submit your log file. If you share your log with SLSRC, your results will be added to our combined club results. We will share our club score with other nearby clubs to see which clubs have the most participation.
We will still offer an education experience via the club’s YouTube channel midafternoon on Saturday. Mark Hall (AEØME) will teach you how to cut a dipole and tune it quickly by hanging it, measuring it, and adjusting it for 1:1 SWR with one update at your desired frequency. With this technique, you may not need an antenna tuner at all for bands where you can fit a dipole in your space.
With limited opportunities for social interaction, we will have the following events. Events are Saturday unless otherwise specified:
- 1 pm – FIeld Day Operating Starts
- 3 pm – Virtual Education – How to tune a dipole (see https://youtu.be/2hb99AypOqs)
- 5 pm – Virtual Dinner (https://meet.google.com/mzn-cpwg-og)
- 8 pm – SLSRC Net on the 146.850 repeater (feel free to join by Allstar or Echolink if you can’t connect via radio)
- 1 pm Sunday – Field Day Ends
We even have a spotter page to help you find other St. Louis area hams and their frequencies to help you make more contacts. If you’re on a frequency calling, post it here and other local hams can find you to make contact. Let’s help each other start pile ups so we can get lots of contacts. Field Day is only 2 weeks away! Get ready now – update your software, charge your batteries, and practice logging so you can do it in your sleep. If you still have specific questions, you can contact us at info (at) slsrc (dot) org or fieldday (at) slsrc (dot) org and we’ll do our best to get you an answer.