Another good Field Day on the books. As with previous years, we ran equipment circa 1930s vintage. The receiver was a HRO-5 and the transmitter was a homebrew wooden rack outfit with a 89-42-802 exciter and PP 814 amplifier giving about 200-250W output.
Different this year was our effort to make some 630M QSOs. The 80M open-wire fed doublet was put into service as a Marconi vertical with the ladder line shorted at the transmitter end. A variometer and shunt coil were used for resonance and impedance matching, respectively. A simple radial system consisting of ten approx. 70 ft long wires were laid out. They were quite effective, bringing the feedpoint resistance down from about 150 ohms with just a single ground rod to around 30 ohms. Even then, the overall efficiency was estimated to be near 1%. The 250W produced by the PP 814s resulted in about 5W EIRP.
Things didn’t look too promising at first, but with patience, cooperating QSB and QRN, and a great set of ears, Mike / WA3TTS, completed a CW QSO with K3MF on 630M! It was a great moment!
Later in the evening, another QSO was made with K9KFR via CW with Eric / NO3M on the key.
Thanks to Mike / WA3TTS, Mark (radio enthusiast), Bob / W3BBO, Neil / W3CUV, and the ARRL group for coming and making it a fun and memorable event!
