I got my original Novice license in 1990 I think (age 12). I was SO excited to participate in my local club’s Field Day outing - but it was a nail biter for my physical license to arrive in the mail in time.
I’d somehow gotten the word from the FCC that my license was issued and I got my call sign (KB2NDR) but I was so worried it wouldn’t get to my house in time for the weekend (and it didn’t!) - but the club president was super chill and said “I trust ya” so he let me participate and I still remember every minute of that weekend to this day.
It was my first full-fledged ham event (my first all-nighter too), sitting in the tents working on HF rigs I could only dream of affording at 3am with guys chain smoking cigars. They were probably chuffed at this nerdy 12 y/o who wanted to play along (minus the smoking bit).
“…CQ Field Day CQ Field Day this is K2-Zed-O, K2-Zulu-Oscar…”
(That weekend launched my short intensity but long lived ham life. Leveled up to Extra and I still have K2KD active today but haven’t touched a radio in years)
I got my ticket at 14 in 1996, which led me to a career in the LMR/Telecom world - I have few regrets, my job is close enough to my hobby that it never gets old. I did my extra on a lark without studying for it.
I did end up getting a vanity 1x3 along the way, because my original call was awful, both over phonetics and spoken.
Awesome! I went KB2NDR -> AA2KT (because at the time AA was the hot new prefix for Advanced) and then when vanities came out I grabbed a 1x2 that I’d dreamed of getting had I been licensed in the 70s :)
KA2PLF, similar, 12 or so, which would be 82 or so. Novice required code and only allowed code at the time. Took part in a few field days from locations up in the mountains in upstate NY where they threw pipes into a lake for ground and strung huge dipoles in the trees.
Age 11 in 1995 I mowed lawns and shoveled snow and spent $90 on a hand held CB radio so I could hurl insults at truck drivers on channel 19. It was my dream to buy or build an illegal amplifier so I didn't have to ride my bike half a block away for them to hear me.
Back in the early 90's, I worked with some guys that were in the San Jose State radio club, W6YL. Although Field Day is not a contest, these guys really really wanted to finish in the top 10 for class 2A.
They found out that I had an Oscar 10/13 satellite station and begged me and my buddy to operate with them (there's bonus points for a satellite contact). So my buddy and I were "hired guns". We had never attended San Jose State and were not members of the club.
These guys were definitely serious. We operated from a huge ranch in the Sunol hills and they erected wire beams for 80 and 40 meters. They did finish in the top 10 the two years my buddy and I participated.
Did you have to do anything nonstandard to assist the team? I find the whole hobby rather interesting and want to get more into it. My grandparents’ old C/Ku band receiver and giant dish led to discovering some trunk feeds and started my curiosity, but most of my radio work has involved WiFi. With WiFi, the use case and radios available without a license somewhat limited what I even thought to try.
I guess I’ll see if there is a local club I can join to meet some folks and see what they’re doing.
What did you normally use the equipment for, since you weren’t in the club prior to your contact with the record breaking group?
I used the equipment for the same reason, to communicate through the Oscar 10 and 13 satellites at home. Oscar 10 was launched in 1983. At that time, I was living in an apartment. I strung up some smaller yagis on the balcony that fortunately faced towards the southwest. I was able to use some, but not all passes of the satellite.
I also used the equipment for terrestrial communications. When I started renting a house, I put up a large yagi for 2-meters. With SSB, you can make contacts out to about 300-400 miles. Enough for contacts between Silicon Valley and the Los Angeles area.
I also made much longer distance contacts with that station with special propagation modes. Meteor bounce, sporadic-E and trans-Pacific (Hawaii) ducting (about 2400 miles).
For the 70cm equipment, I participated in VHF/UHF contests with multioperator groups. This is where we'd go to mountain tops to operate. I was lucky enough to operate from Mt. Pinos a couple of times before ham radio was banned from there. Mt. Pinos is a 8847 ft. mountain at the southern end of the central valley and by far the best location for VHF/UHF operating.
> For the 70cm equipment, I participated in VHF/UHF contests with multioperator groups.
Why?
This is a genuine question! I know I am genuinely uninteresting because I don’t know why I would do this if there wasn’t already a built-in audience. This seems adjacent to shouting into the void if one doesn’t already know that there are listeners/receivers. Why does anyone do this at all?
To be honest, I've pretty much phased out on conventional ham radio. The last time I was out in the field was 2010. These days all my ham radio activity is for SDR (Software Defined Radio) development testing. Here's my Github.
> And here's a demo video of my open source ATSC 3.0 transmitter.
Wasn’t yet following you on Twitter, but was already subbed on YT. I see you, but I don’t recognize you. I will review my history to appreciate further your contribution(s) to my present state.
I am going to DEF CON. I hope to see you there, but if not this year, perhaps sometime soon irl or online.
To circle back, how did this happen:
> > They found out that I had an Oscar 10/13 satellite station
Specifically, how did they know
> that I had an Oscar 10/13 satellite station
?
Are there people fox hunting recreationally, all the time?
You can work the ISS fairly easily from your backyard with an Elk or Arrow antenna and full duplex radio like D72A. I have worked astronauts. During COVID, we all used to get on the satellites as part of late night passes at like 1am and make contacts with each other.
It's certainly a contest for some groups, but I can't say what percentage that would be. There's many many groups that aren't even remotely competitive and for some groups it's primarily a social event.
When we participated with W6YL, we had our own tent, food, and mass quantities of beer. Aside from folks stopping by the tent out of curiosity, it was not a social event at all.
One guy who was a master CW operator wanted to see how the satellite worked. We hooked his keyer up to the 70cm transmitter and let him go at it. At first, hearing his own signal after a 250 millisecond delay confused him a little but I turned the receive audio down to help him out.
No. This is the one day I never operate. It’s a shit show. Seems to be an excuse for people in the countries with crappy regulation enforcement to fire up their kw+ transmitters and monster HF antennas and blast them past us trying to hit the US.
Different people find "fun" in different things. Field Day is fun for the planning, deployment, and operation of ham stations in the field. Some community outreach, some teamwork, some emergency preparedness, and some good practice.
I agree that actually operating during field day is less fun than at any other time of the year, unless you're in "competitive mode" and are trying to win the most contacts in your class. During these three days, the conversations are very short and mostly all the same, so there's not much "rag chewing" going on.
Field Day can also be fun in the sense that you may get permission to do things that you ordinarily could not do, such as operate a station in a public park, and camp there with it for two nights. Another "fun" element is improvising with what you have, such as setting up a station on the top floor of a parking structure in a metropolitan area.
> Field Day is fun for the planning, deployment, and operation of ham stations in the field. Some community outreach, some teamwork, some emergency preparedness, and some good practice.
All things that can be done at any other point during the year and you have the added benefit of being able to hear other stations.
As someone who only has a 5w transmitter, I avoid field day and major contests. I love doing Parks on the Air when camping, and that ends up being a lot more enjoyable.
This is a great time to be on the air especially if you're into late nights and enjoy setting up an outdoor station. Want to work all states? This is a good contest for it. It's my 2d favorite with the November CW Sweepstakes coming in first place.
Actually it's not. It's just wall to wall QRM. You can't exactly setup on a single frequency and call CQ without some asshat setting up right on frequency.
I abhor Field Day because it's chaos. POTA, state QSO parties, 13 Colonies, Museum Ship Weekend, those are my speed.
Most every ham club that sets up for Field Day talk like they're doing "public service" and "outreach", but then they post up at some obscure location quite a way away where most any 'public' would be. The scant visitors they get are either ignored or greeted in an overly excited way and then every old timer wants a chance to impress upon the visitor their view of radio which invariably runs off all but the most determined visitors who can see past all that. I've been to over a dozen different club field day events across the country and most of them are pretty cringy.
---
The best was Tucson almost 20 years ago because my wife and I happened to be tent camping on the same mountain peak where they were setup. She retired to the tent early, I played radio well into the night after the daytime RF pandemonium died down. In the morning one of the club members who also runs a restraunt made everyone omelettes to order on his catering flat top.
One of the worst was Palm Springs RATS. Their setup was at their EOC and closed to the public. I had to essentially "prove" I was a ham to even be allowed in with them. (I told them my callsign but that wasn't enough. "Hi. I'm <callsign> in town for work and thought I'd drop in to do Field Day with you guys." "Do you know anyone here?" "No, I'm just in town for work." "Well, this is a ham radio event." "Yeah, it's Field Day. I'm just here for the week ahead and thought I'd come play radio with you guys." "...and you're not a member?")
Some club in DC/Arlington was pretty awful too. Again, there for work. Two old timers took turns mansplaining ham radio to me most of my time there. Nevermind I was a 30-something dude and with-code Extra. I was on their "get on the air" station doing CW and they kept talking at me while I had headphones on copying callsigns and listening for a break in the pileup.
These days I just don't even both going out because I've been disappointed so many times. Maybe I'll give it a go this evening to yet another new club's setup and see what new form of disappointment awaits.
Should you venture out expecting disappointment I think you'll be more likely to find it. I hope you find a better group and things go better than those bad experiences you had before.
Yes and no. Contestants can be pushy and hasty . It’s not fun if you just want a casual contact or if you don’t have a computer nearby . I do most contacts while hiking and I don’t enjoy contests
It's pretty much what you make of it. I participated in Field Day with a club many years ago. It was basically an excuse to get out of town, setup a station (led by people who loved that aspect, and they served as mentors to those who were new to setting up a station), make contacts or achieve goals that would be difficult to do under ordinary circumstances, give new members a chance to learn new skills, test an experimental rocket engine, get to know people with the club, and many other things. Yes, you have to treat the people you're contacting as though they are die-hard contesters. On the other hand, that is not an excuse to not have fun.
That said, I can understand how it would be difficult to have fun if you were operating solo.
Oh FD is for sure an enemy to casual conversations. Wouldn't even try. Can't speak to the computer part, dupe sheets and paper logs work. More labor later but less RFI to deal with.
For anyone interested, ESPN has a HAM Radio club - WE1SPN[1] - and they are live streaming some of their Field Day operations on YouTube[2]. They're not operating overnight, but should be back in the morning eastern US time. If you'd like to make contact the operators are actively monitoring the chat.
What are some good ways to participate if you don't have an HF radio? (Alternatively, what's a good way to get into HF if you live in a small apartment)?
I live in a small apartment and do 20m using an attic antenna. Of course, I can't compete with big outdoor antennas. But from Scotland, SSB to mainland Europe and FT8 to the US or the Caribbean is not a problem.
Even if you don't have access to an attic, there are antenna constructions that can work for apartments. Have a look at "ARRL's Small Antennas for Small Spaces" and RSGB's "Stealth Antennas" as starting points.
Alternatively, you could consider a portable solution where you carry a small HF rig and some wire in a backpack. The Yaesu FT-857D is very popular for this as it's small, all bands, all modes and does 100W. If you search for "Yaesu FT-857D backpack" you will find many suggestions. It's not in production anymore but you might find it second hand. For Yaesu, other options include the FT-891 (no VHF/UHF) and the more bulky FT-991A. Icom has the IC-7100, which is also a little more bulky than the FT-857D.
I haven't even been able to get an antenna into the air, it's been thunder and lightning the past 3 days at my QTH after about a week of heat and clear skies. schedules just never line up, ha!
If I may wax nostalgic for a moment:
I got my original Novice license in 1990 I think (age 12). I was SO excited to participate in my local club’s Field Day outing - but it was a nail biter for my physical license to arrive in the mail in time.
I’d somehow gotten the word from the FCC that my license was issued and I got my call sign (KB2NDR) but I was so worried it wouldn’t get to my house in time for the weekend (and it didn’t!) - but the club president was super chill and said “I trust ya” so he let me participate and I still remember every minute of that weekend to this day.
It was my first full-fledged ham event (my first all-nighter too), sitting in the tents working on HF rigs I could only dream of affording at 3am with guys chain smoking cigars. They were probably chuffed at this nerdy 12 y/o who wanted to play along (minus the smoking bit).
“…CQ Field Day CQ Field Day this is K2-Zed-O, K2-Zulu-Oscar…”
(That weekend launched my short intensity but long lived ham life. Leveled up to Extra and I still have K2KD active today but haven’t touched a radio in years)
I got my ticket at 14 in 1996, which led me to a career in the LMR/Telecom world - I have few regrets, my job is close enough to my hobby that it never gets old. I did my extra on a lark without studying for it.
I did end up getting a vanity 1x3 along the way, because my original call was awful, both over phonetics and spoken.
Awesome! I went KB2NDR -> AA2KT (because at the time AA was the hot new prefix for Advanced) and then when vanities came out I grabbed a 1x2 that I’d dreamed of getting had I been licensed in the 70s :)
KA2PLF, similar, 12 or so, which would be 82 or so. Novice required code and only allowed code at the time. Took part in a few field days from locations up in the mountains in upstate NY where they threw pipes into a lake for ground and strung huge dipoles in the trees.
Age 11 in 1995 I mowed lawns and shoveled snow and spent $90 on a hand held CB radio so I could hurl insults at truck drivers on channel 19. It was my dream to buy or build an illegal amplifier so I didn't have to ride my bike half a block away for them to hear me.
Back in the early 90's, I worked with some guys that were in the San Jose State radio club, W6YL. Although Field Day is not a contest, these guys really really wanted to finish in the top 10 for class 2A.
They found out that I had an Oscar 10/13 satellite station and begged me and my buddy to operate with them (there's bonus points for a satellite contact). So my buddy and I were "hired guns". We had never attended San Jose State and were not members of the club.
These guys were definitely serious. We operated from a huge ranch in the Sunol hills and they erected wire beams for 80 and 40 meters. They did finish in the top 10 the two years my buddy and I participated.
> They found out that I had an Oscar 10/13 satellite station
Personally, or you had access to one? I am a hobbyist and amateur, so I don’t know how significant this is, but I want to learn!
I had the equipment. 2-meter SSB/CW receiver, 70cm SSB/CW transmitter, large 2-meter and 70cm yagi antennas and an azimuth/elevation rotator.
Oscar 10 and 13 were amateur satellites in HEO (Molniya) orbit. They were super fun to operate since the passes lasted for hours.
Did you have to do anything nonstandard to assist the team? I find the whole hobby rather interesting and want to get more into it. My grandparents’ old C/Ku band receiver and giant dish led to discovering some trunk feeds and started my curiosity, but most of my radio work has involved WiFi. With WiFi, the use case and radios available without a license somewhat limited what I even thought to try.
I guess I’ll see if there is a local club I can join to meet some folks and see what they’re doing.
What did you normally use the equipment for, since you weren’t in the club prior to your contact with the record breaking group?
I used the equipment for the same reason, to communicate through the Oscar 10 and 13 satellites at home. Oscar 10 was launched in 1983. At that time, I was living in an apartment. I strung up some smaller yagis on the balcony that fortunately faced towards the southwest. I was able to use some, but not all passes of the satellite.
I also used the equipment for terrestrial communications. When I started renting a house, I put up a large yagi for 2-meters. With SSB, you can make contacts out to about 300-400 miles. Enough for contacts between Silicon Valley and the Los Angeles area.
I also made much longer distance contacts with that station with special propagation modes. Meteor bounce, sporadic-E and trans-Pacific (Hawaii) ducting (about 2400 miles).
For the 70cm equipment, I participated in VHF/UHF contests with multioperator groups. This is where we'd go to mountain tops to operate. I was lucky enough to operate from Mt. Pinos a couple of times before ham radio was banned from there. Mt. Pinos is a 8847 ft. mountain at the southern end of the central valley and by far the best location for VHF/UHF operating.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Pinos
Of course, this was in the 80's and 90's. Nowadays, weak signal VHF/UHF may not be very active where you live.
> For the 70cm equipment, I participated in VHF/UHF contests with multioperator groups.
Why?
This is a genuine question! I know I am genuinely uninteresting because I don’t know why I would do this if there wasn’t already a built-in audience. This seems adjacent to shouting into the void if one doesn’t already know that there are listeners/receivers. Why does anyone do this at all?
It's an organized event, just like Field Day. The most popular one is in June, since sporadic-E propagation on 50 MHz is available.
https://www.arrl.org/june-vhf
To be honest, I've pretty much phased out on conventional ham radio. The last time I was out in the field was 2010. These days all my ham radio activity is for SDR (Software Defined Radio) development testing. Here's my Github.
https://github.com/drmpeg
And here's a demo video of my open source ATSC 3.0 transmitter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLn5L-k4EPA
Thank you for your response.
I am not active much on GH, but mine is:
https://github.com/aspenmayer
> And here's a demo video of my open source ATSC 3.0 transmitter.
Wasn’t yet following you on Twitter, but was already subbed on YT. I see you, but I don’t recognize you. I will review my history to appreciate further your contribution(s) to my present state.
I am going to DEF CON. I hope to see you there, but if not this year, perhaps sometime soon irl or online.
To circle back, how did this happen:
> > They found out that I had an Oscar 10/13 satellite station
Specifically, how did they know
> that I had an Oscar 10/13 satellite station
?
Are there people fox hunting recreationally, all the time?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_direction_findin...
You can work the ISS fairly easily from your backyard with an Elk or Arrow antenna and full duplex radio like D72A. I have worked astronauts. During COVID, we all used to get on the satellites as part of late night passes at like 1am and make contacts with each other.
You don't even need full duplex. Just an HT that will do "split".
No, you need FD to hear yourself. Anyone who does this every day will tell you FD is the only way. Otherwise you are stepping on people
> Although Field Day is not a contest, these guys really really wanted to finish in the top 10 for class 2A.
That’s literally a contest. If the scoring was private maybe I’d agree.
Field Day may serve other purposes too, but it’s a contest, if not purely so.
It's certainly a contest for some groups, but I can't say what percentage that would be. There's many many groups that aren't even remotely competitive and for some groups it's primarily a social event.
When we participated with W6YL, we had our own tent, food, and mass quantities of beer. Aside from folks stopping by the tent out of curiosity, it was not a social event at all.
One guy who was a master CW operator wanted to see how the satellite worked. We hooked his keyer up to the 70cm transmitter and let him go at it. At first, hearing his own signal after a 250 millisecond delay confused him a little but I turned the receive audio down to help him out.
That’s like saying POTA is a contest which it isn’t
Today/tonight is the 2025 ARRL Field day. Come find a ham to talk to.
No. This is the one day I never operate. It’s a shit show. Seems to be an excuse for people in the countries with crappy regulation enforcement to fire up their kw+ transmitters and monster HF antennas and blast them past us trying to hit the US.
As always most of the fun is closer to the noise.
Different people find "fun" in different things. Field Day is fun for the planning, deployment, and operation of ham stations in the field. Some community outreach, some teamwork, some emergency preparedness, and some good practice.
I agree that actually operating during field day is less fun than at any other time of the year, unless you're in "competitive mode" and are trying to win the most contacts in your class. During these three days, the conversations are very short and mostly all the same, so there's not much "rag chewing" going on.
Field Day can also be fun in the sense that you may get permission to do things that you ordinarily could not do, such as operate a station in a public park, and camp there with it for two nights. Another "fun" element is improvising with what you have, such as setting up a station on the top floor of a parking structure in a metropolitan area.
> Field Day is fun for the planning, deployment, and operation of ham stations in the field. Some community outreach, some teamwork, some emergency preparedness, and some good practice.
All things that can be done at any other point during the year and you have the added benefit of being able to hear other stations.
As someone who only has a 5w transmitter, I avoid field day and major contests. I love doing Parks on the Air when camping, and that ends up being a lot more enjoyable.
This is the way.
QRP for FD is like going fishing without a hook. You better enjoy the scenery and getting away from home because you're not going to bring in much.
This is a great time to be on the air especially if you're into late nights and enjoy setting up an outdoor station. Want to work all states? This is a good contest for it. It's my 2d favorite with the November CW Sweepstakes coming in first place.
> This is a great time to be on the air
Actually it's not. It's just wall to wall QRM. You can't exactly setup on a single frequency and call CQ without some asshat setting up right on frequency. I abhor Field Day because it's chaos. POTA, state QSO parties, 13 Colonies, Museum Ship Weekend, those are my speed.
Most every ham club that sets up for Field Day talk like they're doing "public service" and "outreach", but then they post up at some obscure location quite a way away where most any 'public' would be. The scant visitors they get are either ignored or greeted in an overly excited way and then every old timer wants a chance to impress upon the visitor their view of radio which invariably runs off all but the most determined visitors who can see past all that. I've been to over a dozen different club field day events across the country and most of them are pretty cringy.
---
The best was Tucson almost 20 years ago because my wife and I happened to be tent camping on the same mountain peak where they were setup. She retired to the tent early, I played radio well into the night after the daytime RF pandemonium died down. In the morning one of the club members who also runs a restraunt made everyone omelettes to order on his catering flat top.
One of the worst was Palm Springs RATS. Their setup was at their EOC and closed to the public. I had to essentially "prove" I was a ham to even be allowed in with them. (I told them my callsign but that wasn't enough. "Hi. I'm <callsign> in town for work and thought I'd drop in to do Field Day with you guys." "Do you know anyone here?" "No, I'm just in town for work." "Well, this is a ham radio event." "Yeah, it's Field Day. I'm just here for the week ahead and thought I'd come play radio with you guys." "...and you're not a member?")
Some club in DC/Arlington was pretty awful too. Again, there for work. Two old timers took turns mansplaining ham radio to me most of my time there. Nevermind I was a 30-something dude and with-code Extra. I was on their "get on the air" station doing CW and they kept talking at me while I had headphones on copying callsigns and listening for a break in the pileup.
These days I just don't even both going out because I've been disappointed so many times. Maybe I'll give it a go this evening to yet another new club's setup and see what new form of disappointment awaits.
Should you venture out expecting disappointment I think you'll be more likely to find it. I hope you find a better group and things go better than those bad experiences you had before.
Yes and no. Contestants can be pushy and hasty . It’s not fun if you just want a casual contact or if you don’t have a computer nearby . I do most contacts while hiking and I don’t enjoy contests
It's pretty much what you make of it. I participated in Field Day with a club many years ago. It was basically an excuse to get out of town, setup a station (led by people who loved that aspect, and they served as mentors to those who were new to setting up a station), make contacts or achieve goals that would be difficult to do under ordinary circumstances, give new members a chance to learn new skills, test an experimental rocket engine, get to know people with the club, and many other things. Yes, you have to treat the people you're contacting as though they are die-hard contesters. On the other hand, that is not an excuse to not have fun.
That said, I can understand how it would be difficult to have fun if you were operating solo.
I like field day field ops that’s fine , just not trying to contact during big field days
Oh FD is for sure an enemy to casual conversations. Wouldn't even try. Can't speak to the computer part, dupe sheets and paper logs work. More labor later but less RFI to deal with.
For anyone interested, ESPN has a HAM Radio club - WE1SPN[1] - and they are live streaming some of their Field Day operations on YouTube[2]. They're not operating overnight, but should be back in the morning eastern US time. If you'd like to make contact the operators are actively monitoring the chat.
[1] - https://we1spn.org/
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYZxmubVjd0
What are some good ways to participate if you don't have an HF radio? (Alternatively, what's a good way to get into HF if you live in a small apartment)?
(I already have my license)
I live in a small apartment and do 20m using an attic antenna. Of course, I can't compete with big outdoor antennas. But from Scotland, SSB to mainland Europe and FT8 to the US or the Caribbean is not a problem.
Even if you don't have access to an attic, there are antenna constructions that can work for apartments. Have a look at "ARRL's Small Antennas for Small Spaces" and RSGB's "Stealth Antennas" as starting points.
Alternatively, you could consider a portable solution where you carry a small HF rig and some wire in a backpack. The Yaesu FT-857D is very popular for this as it's small, all bands, all modes and does 100W. If you search for "Yaesu FT-857D backpack" you will find many suggestions. It's not in production anymore but you might find it second hand. For Yaesu, other options include the FT-891 (no VHF/UHF) and the more bulky FT-991A. Icom has the IC-7100, which is also a little more bulky than the FT-857D.
Lurk on a web SDR and pick up "virtual QSOs" on that.
HF in small apartment is very difficult.
Just made two contacts and it is fun !!
I haven't even been able to get an antenna into the air, it's been thunder and lightning the past 3 days at my QTH after about a week of heat and clear skies. schedules just never line up, ha!
[dead]