North Dakota Ø Terrible Snow
Between October 23, 2018 an October 29, 2018n I was able to make six confirmed contacts with the Ducie Island DXpedition. Four FT8 contacts and two SSB contacts (on 15m & 17m) were made. Today, I received the QSL card, containing confirmation of all six of those contacts. Beautiful card.
I have a few different cards that I’m pretty proud of, and this is definitely one of them. More details about the DXpedition and a closer look at the card design can be seen here.
On Saturday night, the International Space Station sent me a picture. They sent the picture to a bunch of other people, too, so it wasn’t personal. The big thing about this, is that it’s the first ever SSTV image that I’ve been able to receive from the ISS.
I know that it’s not the clearest image, by far, but the ISS was about 15 degrees above the horizon, in the southwest, when I received it.
The thing that I found really strange is that I started receiving their signal about 1:30 (one minute and thirty seconds) before it came over the horizon, and continued to hear it for about 1:30 after it went back below the horizon.
I hope to get some better images, in the future. Thanks to Jason (KC0GCG), the settings on the software that I use for tracking are now correct, and I won’t be missing most of the ISS passes.
Well, Winter Field Day 2019 has officially come to a close. We survived, but we also came to a conclusion, and made a decision. As long as we are in North Dakota, we will never again participate in WFD as an outdoor station. We had the experience. And once is all we needed.
We got up to the island (our WFD location) at about 10AM on Saturday morning. Taking care of first things, first, we fired up the generator and the portable heater. If those two things didn’t work for, for some reason, the whole event would have been called off, for us. They fired right up, though.
The next step was to get the antennas up in the air. Using a fishing pole and a 1 oz. weight, I got it over a 40′ tree on the second shot. Pulled the fishing line, pulled the Handy Hundred, then pulled up the end-fed antenna and tied it off. Stretched out the antenna, toward the van and mounted the end about a foot or two off the ground.
We tried to get the “corkscrew” that I use to hold down the Big-Ear antenna tripod into the ground, with no luck. The frozen ground wouldn’t allow it. We ended up using a bungee cord to “attach” the tripod and mast to a 4×4 that a sign was mounted on. It worked pretty well, since nothing ended up hitting the ground.
After running all the coax and extension cord, I tested out the antennas with the analyser. I had the Big-Ear set for 20m, and it tested at 1.15:1 SWR. The end-fed tested below 2:1 on all of the bands that we’d be using, except 75m. If I remember correctly, it was at 4.3:1 at around 3.800. It was better toward the bottom of the 80m band, at 3.600, but that wasn’t where I’d be using it. I decided to try to fix that problem “later”.
Once everything was connected and running, we had about 12 minutes to spare, before the event was set to begin. I was a little surprised that it took us that long, but between and in the middle of the steps involved in the setup, we took quite a few breaks, so we could warm up.
We started making contacts, almost right away. Ran a couple pileups (the first of them was my first experience at running a pileup, which lasted about an hour). We operated on 20m, 40m, and 75m. On 75m, we were very limited, and just barely got the contacts that we needed, to count for the multiplier for the extra band. We also had a lot of (generator?) noise on 75m, but managed to get IL, TN, and WI.
In the end, we wound up with 208 SSB contacts. We didn’t work any digital or CW. At 3:43AM, I got a notification that a Blizzard Warning had been issued. It was expected to move into the area at about 9AM. I decided, at that point, that we wouldn’t be staying until 1 in the afternoon, and we would start tearing things down at dawn. We actually started tearing down at about 8:45AM, and the wind and snow was already there. Luckily, the tear-down went a lot faster than the setup, and we were off the island by 9:30AM.
Things that I’ve learned by doing Winter Field Day, this year.
I want to send out a great big thank you to Jason Linz (ND0JL) for checking in on me via 146.52, every few hours, while he was awake. I really appreciate it!
There was one other thing that did happen, while we were up there. A county sheriff stopped up to see what we were up to. He told us that somebody had reported that it looked like somebody was living on the island. This happened just a few hours into the contest. We explained to him what we were doing, and that we had permission to be there, and everything was alright.
About 8 days from the time that I’m writing this, Winter Field Day will begin. I’ve been watching the Facebook page that’s been set up for WFD, and making sure that I am ready to go get things set up on the morning on January 26th. Some others in the Facebook group have explained how they already have antennas set up on their fish houses, etc.
I am of the thought that this should be an exercise in actual preparedness, and how quickly I can respond, if needed. To put my “getting ready” process into perspective, I’ll explain it, a little bit.
In other words, when WFD comes, I will be grabbing everything that I need and double checking my checklist. The plan is to go from my normal operation at my home to operating in the field in under 2 hours (hopefully less). This is how I would normally do any portable operation, and is a major factor in the Winter Field Day operation. The statement on the front page of their website explains the importance of preparedness.
For Winter Field Day, I will be uploading my logs, live, to Contest Online ScoreBoard. I have a link to the WFD contest on the front page of my site. This is so you can follow along, if you’d like, and see where I’m at on the leaderboard.
I am also testing out what I’m calling a “Live Log”, which is linked in the right-hand column of the home page. That Live Log will NOT be updated during WFD, since I’ll be linked to the Contest Online ScoreBoard. It’s not that I “can’t” do it… I just don’t see the need to use any more bandwidth than I have to, while tethering during the event.
In the same respect to limiting bandwidth, I will also not be running any spotter network, either. Since I mostly plan on calling CQ, and not answering, I don’t see a real advantage in running it.
My QRZ page has been updated with the information about the fact that I will be participating in WFD, and all of the other information that I thought may be important. Since most people that I will talk to likely refer to my QRZ page, first, I thought that was important to put, there.
While I wasn’t working on becoming the highest scoring station during the 2018 Grid Chase, I actually got a higher score that I would have thought. Out of all the hams that participated, I got an overall score of 2204.
In the state of North Dakota, I came in “fourth place”. The three that placed above me from ND were Nancy Yoshida (KG0YL), Steven Lee (KD0CVZ), and Peter Pugliano (WC0G).
It looks like the Grid Chase was a 2018 “contest” only, and was not extended into 2019. Since I missed the first 3 months of the year, I feel like I didn’t do too bad. I was looking for some other kind of year-long event for 2019, but so far, nothing has been announced.
I added an update to the original post on November 27th that said “Just registered and added myself to the Winter Field Day map, this morning. At this time, I’m the northern-most (and probably coldest) spot on the map.” Well… The first part is still true. I’m still registered and on the map, but I am no longer the “northern-most” spot on there. I am, however, still the northern-most “outdoor” station on the map.
Since I posted the original post, I have come up with a “plan B”. I now have an 80 meter end-fed half wave antenna that I will be using. In fact, the EFHW will probably become the “plan A”, and I’ll let the Big Ear antenna be the plan B. I think that I have everything that I need to get it up into a tree and on the air. I may need to hit up a friend for a smaller piece of coax, though. Everything I have is much longer than I probably need, and if I don’t need to cut it up, I don’t want to.
The place where I’ll be running WFD from is all set up, and I’ve got the proper permission that I need. The only thing that I may have to worry about is if we get any kind of really bad weather during that time period. Getting in and out of there may be a little tricky if things get bad enough. I’ll hope for the best, but plan for the worst, though.
Speaking of planning, I was thinking that I would be using a small electric heater that I have, in order to keep the van warm. I pulled the space heater out, the other day and fired up the generator. I realized that the heater (on high) pulls 1500w. The generator that I have is capable of 2000w. This would leave me 500w (pushing it) for the radio and anything else that I connect. The radio pulls just under 200W at full power and the laptop that I use for logging would pull about 150w. That would leave me about 150 watts of wiggle room. I’m not comfortable with that, at all.
My solution is to put about a $130 initial investment into a propane tank and heater. It’s all locally available, so I don’t even need to order anything. This solution should work out much better, since I will be “saving” all of those watts, and the propane heater should do a much better job of heating the van. This really showed me that the planning is about 80% of this whole exercise.
The location that I chose is very ideal, since it is a relatively open area, but has a couple trees that I can get a wire antenna up about 40 feet in the air. When I looked at the distances that I needed, the location of the “station” set up puts the antenna(s) on one side of the van and the generator on the other side, behind a small brick building (which should do a good job at blocking any interference from it). Also, it should shield the generator from the weather and wind. I may need to come up with something to protect the “connection” side of the generator, so nothing gets wet, though.
I did purchase the full suite of N3FJP software, and have started using Amateur Contact Log as my main logging program. I plan to use his Winter Field Day Contest Log during WFD. My son (KE0MHY) also plans on helping me out, and he’s familiar with the N3FJP software, since he used it during last Field Day. This should make the logging the least of any of my worries about the whole event. There’s a lot of “extras” in his software that I wasn’t even aware of when I purchased it that I’m really happy about.
Since the last post, I have also talked to Shawn (AD0ND), and he told me that he does not plan on running an outdoor station, this year. In a way, I wish he would, but in another way, I’m kinda’ happy he isn’t, since this will give me a little better chance at getting higher in the results. Not that it will get me much more than bragging rights. but like he said, “it’s fun, but the bragging rights are even better”.
The only big thing that I have major concerns about is the BIG THING that will prevent me from getting even close to obtaining those bragging rights. The HF conditions, lately have been (to say the least) AWFUL. If you’ve been on HF over the past couple weeks, I’m sure you would agree. 100 watts and a wire can usually do a pretty good job, but if the propagation isn’t there, it makes things “really” difficult. I really hope that the conditions improve before the end of January. The only thing I have on my side, if they don’t improve, is that I am a member of OMISS and the 3905 net. Those two nets have done more for me to improve my radio “hearing” than anything else. Using headphones and training my ears to ignore the static has been essential for making a lot of contacts on those nets. I’m proud to say that I’ve become pretty good at it.
This may be the last update before WFD, but I will post an update after WFD, no matter what.
Let me know, in the comments, if you are also planning to participate in Winter Field Day, and what your plan is.
I’ve got four days off from work, this week, so this morning, I decided to make it my day to “sleep in”. Thankfully my wife let me sleep until 11:00am. I seem to need to do that, once in a while, just to “catch up” on sleep, I guess. She did wake me up, abruptly, though, and I am also thankful for that.
The reason why she woke me up is because she heard some traffic on the scanner that I left running in the ham shack/office. Any other night, I would have turned off the scanner (or anything else that makes noise in the shack), but I must have forgotten, last night… thank goodness.
When she woke me up, she said that it sounded like there was somebody in an airplane that she heard. Being half asleep, still, I wasn’t sure if I left the audio for the air traffic feed turned up. I hardly ever turn the audio on that one up, even though it’s running all the time. I soon realized that it was the amateur radio scanner that she had heard.
I had heard of individuals being aeronautical mobile, before, but it was the first time I had ever heard one, myself. I jumped on the mic as soon as W9AFB called QRZ on 146.520 MHz, and he heard me, right away. Perfect signal, though I turned down the squelch, just in case. We had a short QSO, and he got back to contacting others.
Since I also have an ADS-B antenna and “Orange” receiver, I also pulled up the map of the aircraft that I was picking up. I first thought that he was one of the other planes that I saw, but after confirming with him that it wasn’t, I looked closer at the MLAT data that I was receiving. It turns out that he was in a military aircraft designated as “TOPCT14”. I got back to him, a little bit later, and he confirmed that he was in that plane. They circled the region a few more times (training, I think), and then left the area, toward the south.
My XYL told me that she heard Lyle talking to him, before I came downstairs. I tried to get in touch with Jason and Michelle, but because it’s a Monday, both of them were working and weren’t able to get to their radios.
It was a really cool experience, and I enjoyed making the contact with Scott. I let him know that I would be sending him a QSL card, when I noticed that they were leaving, as they flew south past I-94. I filled out the card, right away, and realized, as I was completing the QSO information that my radio was set to only 5 watts of output power. I thought about cranking it up to 50 watts and trying to reach him again, as they flew past Brookings, SD, but I really didn’t want to be “that guy” that gets annoying.
Anyway… I hope to talk to him, again, if he comes this way in the future.
Here’s the audio (major timeshift – all “dead air” gaps removed) The full length was 1 hour & 19 minutes:
UPDATE (Nov 27, 2018): Just registered and added myself to the Winter Field Day map, this morning. At this time, I’m the northern-most (and probably coldest) spot on the map.
Over the past couple days, I’ve been thinking about getting involved in Winter Field Day 2019. Obviously, it’s more comfortable sitting in a warm house with hot coffee (or cold beer) and not having to worry about everything that comes with setting up a portable HF station. The challenge of actually “doing it”, though is something I think I’d like to try.
Setting up a portable station is easy enough when the weather is nice. Finding the time to do it, last summer was my biggest obstacle. The hours that I was working just didn’t allow me to get out there as much as I had wanted to. I did manage to go portable three times (plus Field Day), last summer, but I would have loved to have traveled around a lot more.
My work schedule, in the cold months, is a lot less busy, but of course the downside of that is that it’s cold!!! If you’ve never been to North Dakota, but you’ve “heard” how bad the winters get up here, what you heard was probably true. Of course, some winters are better than others, but when it’s bad… it’s bad. It’s almost “always” warmer in Anchorage, AK than it is in North Dakota.
Temperatures of -20 to -30 are pretty normal in the dead of winter, then add the wind chill (which also blows A LOT in the winter) and also the snow and most people are content to remain indoors as much as possible. The thought of “camping” in the winter is something that most people don’t even think of. There are some people that go ice fishing, but even though I like to fish, the idea of sitting on a frozen lake in a little hut and sticking a line through a little hole always made me shake my head. Definitely not for me!
I suppose that means that I am a lot more interested in radio than fishing, since I am actually considering setting up a station on January 26th and getting on the air for 24 hours, straight.
I bought my current vehicle (a van) with the intention of converting it into something that would be comfortable to travel and sleep in. I still haven’t converted the electric system, added insulation, or anything else the way that I had planned, but it’s still a pretty comfortable van on the inside. I have a generator and a small electric heater which should do a good job at keeping the inside warm enough, even without any insulation. I’ll need to test that out before making the commitment for Winter Field Day, though. The generator is powerful enough to keep the heater, lights, and radio running. I just want to make sure it’s “enough” heat.
The antenna that I use when I’m portable is set up on a tripod, which I normally anchor straight down to the ground using a “dog tie-out” screw. That might not be possible, depending on how frozen the ground is. I’ll need to come up with a “plan B”, just in case, though. There’s bound to be a lot more wind at the end of January than there was last summer. I’m still working through the planning in my head, but overall, it’s something that I’m looking forward to.
The rules for Winter Field Day are almost the same as that other Field Day, with some slight changes and different exchanges. I plan on doing this as an individual (not with the club), so I will only be using one radio, off-grid. If I make at least one contact, I will (at least) be able to get 4,502 points.
Last year, Shawn (AD0ND) made 157 contacts from north of Valley City, and got 13,293 points. He had the highest score for a 1O station, and came in second for all of “zero-land” (the one in first was running 3 stations in MN). He was the ONLY one running and outdoor station in North Dakota. The only other ND station in the results was running a “home” station in Bismarck.
Shawn was running one of the stations are our club’s Field Day set up, last June. He did a great job, there, and we had a great time, but I think I want to give him a run for his money (there’s no money involved, by the way), and hopefully come close to his Winter Filed Day score or maybe even pass him. Honestly, I haven’t heard if he was going to do WFD again, this year, or not. Either way, I plan to be out there.
For a few months, now, I have been working, on and off, on 30 meters and I’m up to 46 states by using FT8. That’s not an exceptional thing, though, until you realize that the Buckmaster 7 band off center fed dipole (which is what I’m using) is not supposed to work on 30 meters. The power getting reflected back to the radio is a little high (3.1:1 SWR), but I keep the power turned down, and the effective radiated power out of the antenna is about 25 watts. With that, I have actually seen amazing results. Like I said, 46 states, so far, and the furthest DX contact on 30m has been southern Australia.
The only states that I need on 30 meters are AK, ME, ND, and SD. I have a feeling that AK may be the hardest to get, since I don’t recall ever hearing any stations from AK on 30m.
Tonight, I tried tuning over to 1.840 MHz, which is the 160 meter FT8 frequency. I heard a few stations, which is more than I think I had ever heard in the past, there. Partly due to interference, and probably mostly due to conditions and antenna. Even though my FT-991A will not tune to 160m using this Buckmaster 7 band OCFD, it will still allow me to transmit with an SWR of 3.1:1. I, of course, turned the power way down, and I am getting an effective radiated power of about 21 watts out of the antenna.
Amazingly, I got my first two contacts on 160 meters, tonight. One station in Texas and another in Wisconsin. Very surprisingly, I got an FT8 report of +12 from the Wisconsin station, even though I heard him at a -17.
After the two contacts were made, the band and all of the signals seemed to drop out. I made a few more CQ calls, but heard nothing more from anybody. It’s late, and I need to work, tomorrow, so I gave up.
I was so excited, though, that I needed to get this out there. I am not sure if I am more happy with the antenna or the radio (or the mode) at this point. Where I am located, there is absolutely no way for me to even think about putting up a legitimate 160 meter antenna, so the fact that I was able to even pull off those two contacts has me really excited.
Since I’ve been hanging out doing FT8 so much, lately, I’ve decided that I should actually update the design of my electronic QSL card. I don’t initiate sending out physical QSL cards for FT8 contacts, but if I receive one, I’ll return one.
The card that I have at eQSL has been redesigned to match my physical card, more closely. The physical card still has a lot more information, since it’s printed on both sides.
I actually download all of the eQSL cards that I receive, but I don’t actually print most of them. If I get a card with a unique design, or more personally designed, or a country that I don’t have any for, I will print them. I realized that because of the card design I had, it most likely wasn’t getting printed by anybody.
There’s also a place to “vote” for card designs on the site (when you receive them), so we’ll see if my new one gets any votes, now.