Recap of the 2023 Field Day event
This year we were invited by the City of McCall Airport to participate in the airport’s annual open house, which each year falls on Field Day weekend. The open house event includes many displays of local aircraft, emergency services units and teaching seminars.
A few highlights:
• We created a “K7M” page on QRZ.com and promoted the Field Day event on our Facebook Page. We posted our station location and information on the ARRL Field Day Locator page
• Set-up began on Friday and finished Saturday morning. Our set-up crew was Larry Stokes, Cliff Steele, Ed Porter, Phillip Scrivano, Dave Sorensen, John Quinzio, Brian Hamilton
• The HF antenna was an 33ft 8-band vertical; our primary HF radio was the Icom 7300 with a Yaesu 991A ready; and a VHF radio on the repeater network
• HF operation on either 20 or 40 meters was continuous from 1200hrs Saturday to 1100hrs Sunday. We operated as a single transmitter (Class 1A) with a GOTA (Get On The Air) station. The GOTA operator was Brian Hamilton. John Quinzio was the GOTA coach & control operator. We operated on emergency battery and generator power to practice configuring both in the future if needed
• CIARC gave a 30-minute public presentation scheduled by the McCall Airport staff on the history and modern aspects of amateur radio and the CIARC (can be seen here under the “About Us” tab) followed by a presentation outlining the features of the GMRS
• We were visited by five local licensed amateurs and two from out of the area along with 13 visitors (there were more, but not logged)
• Two local officials from Valley County and McCall visited our site
• Contacts were made on SSB phone (some did not get logged). Most were with stations in the west including California, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Texas, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota and Idaho. We made contacts in Illinois, Ohio, West Virginia, New York, Hawaii and Alaska and British Columbia
• As with each CIARC Field Day, the focus was on learning and gaining experience in emcomm operations. This year’s event presented the opportunity for members to gain on-air experience and gave us more insight into remote field operating including how to best manage the station in inclement weather (rain and wind conditions)
the HF Antenna
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2022 CIARC Field Day
The CIARC 2022 Field Day event was a celebration of our club’s 40th anniversary. The event was held at Legacy Park in the heart of McCall . We greeted 30+ visitors, several of which were Hams visiting McCall from out of the area. Visitors made contacts on our repeater system, and on DMR. There were many questions regarding becoming a licensed operator and much interest was expressed by our visitors in the potential for emergency communications among friends and family.
This event gave us insight into how we can build upon the present configuration of our emcomm trailer platform to improve it’s capabilities. We did not have the resources to deploy an NVIS station—something the team had looked forward to. And, even though propagation conditions around the world were very difficult, we made contacts in 9 states from coast-to-coast using a variety of modes including phone, CW, DMR, and PSK31 digital. Our 33 ft high 8 band vertical antenna did the job for us. We had 240 look-ups on our QRZ.com K7M special event page
Larry Stokes conducted a mobile station installation session covering hard wiring radio equipment and antennas for safe and efficient operation.
CIARC members on site for FD 2022
Dave Sorensen KE7FST, Larry Stokes N7IBC, Gary Scott KG6MRX, Dave McQuade W7LCC, John Quinzio W7JMQ, Brian Hamilton N7BMH, Cliff Steele ASG7DH, Guy Dougherty KJ7BBC, Ron Walker WB6VSJ
Visiting hams FD 2022
Ray Montagne W7CIA, Marty Tushkowski KE7KQE, Joanie Quinzio, W7MME and others whom we did not log their call signs 🙁
