Will be held June 22-23, 2019.
Field Day is always held on the 4th
full weekend in June.
The 2019 Rules will be updated/released
in March 2019.
N1MM+
Use for CMARA Field Day
N1MM+ Use for CMARA Field Day
Sat, Jun 8, 2019 at 6:18 PM
Howdy CMARAians!
LESS THAN TWO WEEKS UNTIL FIELD DAY! I hope everyone is planning on coming to Field Day on June 22nd and 23rd! We WILL have a GOTA (Get On The Air) station so you can operate if you haven't had the chance to contact anyone on Field Day before, or even if you haven't been on HF yet at all. Come JOIN the FUN! 925 East Hill Rd., Oakham, MA. 2pm Saturday the 22nd thru 2pm Sunday the 23rd.
OK folks, there is a LOT of material here and EVERY BIT of it is important so let's get down to business.
First off34..
An Important Message from Arian AB2IX, FDTC, WDO, GOTAM, BODM, ARGG.
(FD Task Coordinator, Welcome Desk Organizer, GOTA Station Manager, and Board of Director Member, All Round Good Guy)
Dear CMARA members:
At the CMARA meeting June 20 we will be looking for help from everybody for Field Day (FD).
We begin site work on Friday evening June 21 and Saturday morning June 22. FD is from 2:00pm EDT on Saturday June 22nd to 2:00pm EDT on Sunday June 23rd.
With over 80 paid members and regular meeting attendance of 35 plus, we should be able to muster assistance for all of the activities.
In past years Field Day has been run by a few people who work their tails off covering all of the jobs that need to be done. Sometimes that?s not an enjoyable situation.
This year let's do it differently!
Here are the jobs for which your help is needed on an ‘as necessary’ basis. Jobs/assignments could be 1 hour to many hours, depending on your availability and the task at hand. Help is needed before, during and at the end of FD.
- Assist the manager of; each of 6 transmitter sites, the Cook Tent, Mess Tent, Welcome Tent, GOTA Tent, assembling and disassembling of Antennas, ancillary equipment, radio, tents/EZ Ups, generators, Network antennas and equipment, as needed. Friday night, Saturday morning, Sunday afternoon.
- Assist the Safety officer in deployment, and pack up, of Safety flags, cones and markers for; cables, guy ropes, tent guys, generator areas, antenna areas, and parking areas. Saturday morning, Sunday afternoon.
- Assist the head Chef in setup of cooking equipment and preparation of meals, coffee and snacks. Saturday morning, during FD, and Sunday afternoon (NOTE: the 'Chef' doesn't know anything about brewing coffee. PROFESSIONAL HELP ON COFFEE IS NEEDED!)
- Take on responsibility to check generators, get gas, and donuts or other supplies needed by the Chef, and owners of the 6 Transmitter operating sites. Saturday morning, throughout FD, and Sunday afternoon
- Assist in manning the Welcome Tent including the Operations Center and GOTA station. You will be welcoming people to the site, handing out literature, monitoring N1MM for band assignments and operating slots, on the PC and large monitor. You may also be asked to help visitors operate the GOTA station.
- Somebody signup for a Satellite contact.
- Somebody signup for Solar powered VHF contact
- Somebody signup to receive the ARRL Bulletin
- All people who wish to operate stations or be a Logger during FD are asked to sign up on June 20. The owners of the equipment and tent for each band will have operating priority, but each station must be made available for other operators while the Primary operator or Logger is resting or has gone home. All initial assignments will be made at the Welcome Tent based on the initial signups on June 20. If you do not signup on June 20, we will do our best to accommodate you for an hour or so of operating or a Logging position at any station.
- All people who do not normally come to FD, who have Generators (Inverter type only), radios, notebook PCs, Monitors, power supplies, Solar panels, gell batteries, antennas, ropes, ground rods, 6' or 8' tables, chairs, please offer to bring these items by signing up on June 20. You will be contacted as necessary at the end of the meeting on Jun 20. Hint, write you call on a bunch of address labels and attach them to your property. Many of the above tasks will take 1, 2 or 3 or more hours of your time. This means that you can sign up to do a task, sometime during the setup, teardown and during the day/night, then go home, stay and operate or. This also applies to loaning FD the items as in 10 above, you can drop them off, stay a while, perform other tasks, and come back Sunday afternoon to pick them up.
On June 20, everyone will be asked to sign up for any task, no matter how short or how long. Loaning equipment to FD signups will also be done on June 20 OR if you can't make the meeting you can email Dan at danrau6@yahoo.com.
Please note that a Logging position at an active station or GOTA operator does not have to be an experienced Ham, although, all persons at the radio position must be familiar with operation of N1MM.
Our goal this year is to break 10,000 points and be in first place in the 6A category. The only way to do that is to maximize all special points, like; GOTA, served agency visitors, Government figures, Satellite and Solar powered contacts, ARRL Bulletin copying, CW contacts, Voice contacts, Digital contacts, Public Information Desk, Publicity, and, to maximize use of all Transmitters.
Remember that FD is fun with a serious side of, operating under field conditions, for emergency deployment of Amateur Radio.
As always, the motto for FD is Safety, Safety and Safety! (Dang! Where's the fun in THAT?)
If you have any questions please bring them on June 20, or email Dan Rau at: danrau6@yahoo.com
Respectfully submitted,Adrian, AB2IX
FDTC, WDO, GOTAM, BODM, ARGG, and Saturn 5 Test Equipment Designer.
N1MM LOGGING INFO FROM TERRY W1TR
CMARA will operate class 6A WMA34 6 alpha western mass, I will setup the empty log file with the appropriate
information.
It would be a great help to all if EVERYONE were to bring their laptop or other computer to the club meeting on June 20 for a workshop following the K8UT FD Video and some additional stuff from me.
I will bring my laptop with the Thursday version of N1MM, and the Field Day Thumb Drive with the current software installation packages and other information. We will use this version unless something utterly important comes out in N1MM+ later than that, then the last update will be on Saturday morning.
I will have all the WSJT-x / FT8 / FT4 downloads and documents, but will NOT talk much about its use, or help with its installation.
I suggest those who want to use FT8 / FT4 / PSK / RTTY digital learn WSJTX, FLDIGI, MMTTY, and N1MM+ Digital at home.
IMPORTANT…In order to facilitate proper networked operation…
- Set the properties on the N1M desktop ICON to
RUN AS ADMINISTRATORī this will allow synchronization of the computer clocks to the master computer - ALL N1MM versions must be identical or the networking will not work (it will be provided on the thumb drive.
- Everyone must start with the same EMPTY FIELD DAY LOG file / database or the networking will not work (it will be provided on the thumb drive.
- Everyone must use CAT control to acquire the transceiver frequency directly from the unit itself, to keep the network properly informed on various radios and their frequencies.
- I will HELP everyone who does not know how to do CAT control, but you will need to acquire the needed hardware beforehand.
- Those who want to automatically send CW will need an RS-232 (or USB to RS-232 device) I will help but not provide the unit.
- Those who want to automatically send voice will need a sound card interface (also needed for digital) and to setup the audio files.
- I will HELP everyone with all of this, but we need to get ready BEFORE the club meeting date.
I will copy the ARRL FD BULLETIN here on Friday evening to provide that BONUS for the club.
Terry G. Glagowski / W1TR HAM: W1TR / USAF MARS: AFA1DI / GRID: FN31vw / ELEV: 950 MSLemail W1TR@YCCC.ORG or phone (860) 429-9444 (Landline) (860) 617-1969 (Cell)
NOTE FROM BOB W1TAB ABOUT THE FIELD NETWORK
The field day network is operating at the astronomy club field in Oakham. We will NOT be bringing the router to the meeting. It is permanently mounted and is not to be touched. If we need updates to logging software, they can be done via the usb thumb drives. The wifi at the meeting is pretty poor as is cellular coverage.
The ssid for the wifi in Oakham is “CMARA"”. The passphrase is “fieldday”. I will be available to assist in connecting to the wifi. I believe Jim Garner KC1BHD should be able to help for any other computer issues.
We will be sharing George Smichinski‘s Internet connection. Everyplace on the field has adequate wifi coverage for good speed, however, streaming video will slow this to a crawl if everybody uses it. In the hours before field day operations begin and all during the event nobody is allowed to stream video from the Internet so we can maintain good access speed for more important purposes.
Bob Peloquin - W1TABUpdated: 06.20.2019:ldg
