By webmaster 30 January, 2024
Exercise:
ZL1AA After Action Report for the Jock White Memorial Field Day 2024 (24-25th Feb) Detail: This annual contest is named to honour Jock White ZL2GX, NZART Contest and Awards Manager for over 40 years, for the service that he gave to NZART during that time. Scope & Objective: This contest is primarily to test Branch organisation and weld a team of workers together. Your team can aim to be as competitive or as social as it likes, or all points in between. Stakeholders: All members are welcome to attend and take part in the activities. Expectations: Operate on a selection of bands and modes and make as many contacts as possible in the allotted times. Saturday 1500-2400 NZDT and Sunday 0600-1500 NZDT.
Saturday 24th:
ZL1AA organised an AGM meeting for 11am on Saturday. It was great to see many long time and regular faces at the meeting. Congratulations to Matt Lawrence (ZL1LZ) for his appointment as club President. Unfortunately, there was not much time between the AGM’s completion and the 3pm competition start for testing and deployment of an operational 80m antenna. We did manage to get a 40m elevated square loop antenna up and operational on the clubs Icom 7610 radio. Simon brought along his own Gazebo tent for the 40m station. We also had power generation with solar into a portable Goal Zero battery with chaining to several 120ah batteries. We were hampered by a lack of people for the preparation work required. Additionally, due to unforeseen battery degradation, we were running into power issues after the sun had set. We attempted to utilise the club’s generator to charge the existing batteries and power our HF radio, but unfortunately, the generator is faulty and is not outputting any voltage. We did put time into troubleshooting the generator. Overall, we did manage to make a decent number of contacts on 40m throughout the day. Operators were ZL1LLY, ZL1SKL, ZL3AQT, ZL1SWW, ZL1TC, ZL1ACK and ZL1LZ. We decided to call it at about 10pm and packed up all the gear and stored it in the clubrooms. No members stayed at the club overnight.
Sunday 25th:
Simon (ZL1SWW) was the first operator on-site just after 8am. He continually put in a heroic effort to capture as many contacts as possible throughout the space of the weekend. I (ZL1TC) arrived around 10am with Soren, John, Lilly, and Rob close behind. We elected to setup a Chameleon LEFS 8010 EFHW antenna for 80m with the clubs Icom 7300, to work alongside the 40m 7610. (This antenna was not available on Saturday) Additionally, as the sun was obscured by rain and clouds, the solar system was not able to function. Luckily, Simon brought along his generator, and we connected both battery systems (in the van and the 40m tent) to allow both radios to operate on 100W. We immediately started making 80m contacts from the back of my Delica radio van, with the 40m tent continually collecting contacts. We also had a visit from Chris (ZL1CTL) who helped work 80m. We were interrupted by rain several times throughout the day, which caused us a few issues with ac cabling from the generator. We managed to work through this and secure more contacts, but, as we realised, we had missed vital time throughout the competition and the rain looked like it was about to set in vigorously, so we decided to call the competition at about 1pm. This turned out to be the right decision given we had limited hands to pack up gear in the rain. What went well? Great people. We all had a lot of fun, learning to operate during a competition. 40m was cranking when we had power and an operator on the radio. What could we improve? Preparation and participation. We really struggled to organise a working and competition capable 80m antenna, power to drive the radios through the night, and have enough hands on-site to deploy and operate over the weekend. Conclusion All in all it was a great learning experience for us new people and a good opportunity for all those involved to get together and talk on the air. With a bit more prep, gear replacement and participation we can make next year even better.
