Field Day 2013

Field Day 2013 is now history.  We did something new this year in that we (WM4AA and NY4G) set-up the Class 2B station at a campground at the base of Mt Pisgah in North carolina along the Blue Ridge Parkway at 5000 feet of elevation.  It was a great campground - clean, bathroom / shower facilities, a nearby general store and trees tall enough to hang wire antennas from.  Plan A had been to use the Hexbeam along with wire antennas.  Unfortunately, the mast on the antenna did not end up in the checklist.  It never got loaded.  We had to resort to plan B.  I had made up a G0GSF (aka ZS6BKW) dipole a while back as a back up antenna.  It used 16 gauge THHN as radiators with a twin lead as a radiator/feedline.  We still had to terminate the balanced feedline from the twin lead to an unbalanced coaxial feedline - and ahad to improvise that by borrowing the termination from the hexbeam.  The pneumatic launcher worked like a charm as it launched a tennis ball clear over a 70 foot tree with plenty of height to spare.  We hung the Par end Fed Z from Matt's site along with an end fed half wave monopole.  We hung the G0GSF from the back of my site.  Here is Matt's set-up for night time ops:

Here is the setup at my camp site.  Our solar panel

Both our rigs are KX3s.  Mine is running NaP3 as a panadapter.

Here is a photo of what night time operation is like:

The views were spectacular:

All in all - 282 contacts (280 were CW) at 5 watts output.

The launcher to put up those pesky antennas