2017 Billerica ARS Field Day Plan

The 2017 BARS Field Day will be a social event for all club members. Fun and camaraderie will take precedence over making a high score and winning. Field Day, first and foremost is an exercise in operating in emergency like conditions away from commercial power. It is a training exercise for new hams and a way for more experienced hams to sharpen their skills setting up and operating away from a home location. Above all it is not a contest, although many do treat it as such.

Class:

We thought long and hard about the class to operate in. Should we make things simple or more complex, big radios or simple radios, high power or low power, beams and big antennas or simpler wire based antennas, generators, or batteries?

As this is a rebuilding year for BARS, and we are looking for a fun but challenging field day, here is what was decided. QRP was chosen for its utter simplicity and its extraordinary fun factor.

Class 2E

 (Class E) Home stations – Stations operating from permanent or licensed station locations using Emergency power.  Class E may work all Field Day stations

We plan to operate 2 QRP stations running 5 watts or less from Batteries. The Batteries will be charged before the event and recharged during the event by solar panels. This gives us a 5 times power multiplier. We will have both cw and ssb stations available for members use.

Call Sign:

The club call sign W1HH will be used for all Field Day Operation.

Antennas:

We plan to set up two multi-band dipole wire antennas capable of operation on all HF bands between 10-80 meters. As we are very low in the sunspot cycle we expect the most use to be made on 80/40/20 but openings on 10/15 are always possible.

Rigs:

To be identified

Computer Logging:

We plan to use two windows based PCs that are networked together and running N1MM+ contest software. If you are not familiar with N1MM+ we will train you.

Food:

This will be a highlight of the BARS Field Day. We are blessed with several extraordinary chefs who plan to offer both a Saturday 6 PM evening buffet and a 9 AM Sunday morning breakfast. Snacks and beverages will be available all weekend. We have yet to determine if there will be a minimal cost or not.

Open to the public:

We plan to advertise the BARS Field Day via several media outlets to attract visitors for amateur radio demonstrations

Location:

We are grateful to Nan Araway, NK1A for the gracious use of a comfortable indoor facility, complete with screen in porch for bug free comfort when operating and all facilities for an enjoyable time. The address is 65 Littleton Rd, Chelmsford, MA 01824. We will have signage for the site to help identify it to members and visitors.