ARRL Field Day Activities 2008

FILAMARS will participate  in this year's ARRL Field Day activities. Our location is at Sweetwater County Park Summit in Bonita, California. The approximate coordinates and elevation is 32deg 40min 57.84sec North; -117deg 00min 10.55sec West at 273 feet above sea level. Check also ARRL weblink at http://www.arrl.org/contests/announcements/fd/locator.php, type in "ND6U" at the space "Location or Call sign" then click on "Search For Day Station". 

The public is invited to come and see how we operate and make contacts within the US and territoires, and Canada. ARRLs Field Day activities is always on the fourth full weekend of June and communications begins at 1800 UTC (1100 PDT) Saturday and ends at 2100 UTC (1400 PDT). Field Day 2008 is on June 28-29, 2008. For specific rules in this year's field day activities, go this weblink at http://www.arrl.org/contests/rules/2008/fd.html .

We will operate as "4A SDG" station on HF and 50MHz and above (VHF and UHF) and look for us at phone, CW and digital modes. An APRS station will also be set up for this event and it will be "ND6U" field day station. We will use N3FJP's field day network logging program version 2.5. N3FJP's website is http://www.n3fjp.com .

For any Boy Scouts troops around the vicinity of San Diego, National City, Bonita and Chula Vista who would to like participate with us and eventually receive merit badges as requirement are cordially invited. Please make arrangement with club's event coordinator, Pete (KO6JZ) at ko6jz@yahoo.com or the club's president, Ben (N6VVY) at n6vvy@yahoo.com. 

Field Day stresses emergency preparedness. Frequently, entire radio clubs get involved and assemble a portable radio station in a field or park. Some might use quickly deployable portable antennas while other might erect more elaborate radio masts and towers supporting several antennas. Generators or solar power provide electricity to amateur radio transceivers, which may be located in tents, recreational vehicles or other portable shelters.

The contest aspect of a Field Day operating event is to contact as many stations as possible in the given time period (twenty-four hours, during a weekend, if setup commences before the contest starts, or 27 hours if setup commences at contest start time) using the portable station. Each station will exchange  information with other participating stations. For the North American Field Day, the exchange consists of the station call sign, the name of the ARRL-recognized section from which the station is operating, and a class designator which indicates the number of transmitters concurrently used at the station and information about the type of electrical power source being used. The contest portion of Field Day has two purposes. The primary purpose is to demonstrate the group's ability to plan operations that can be effective for an entire twenty-four-hour period, including operator endurance and adequate numbers of operators for a shift operation. The secondary portion is to demonstrate the technical proficiency of the station that has been hastily constructed for the purpose; in theory a better station will be capable of emergency operations in more dire conditions. Such a station will also be capable of making more contacts during the contest portion of Field Day.