Field Day +2

As promised, here is the video that I promised to show here.

Some thoughts on lightning protection - I don't have any fancy lightning arrestors in my shack. When the weather is threatening, I disconnect the coax. I keep one of these AcuRite portable detectors in our rec room, where I spend a lot of time. If there's a thunderstorm or a lightning strike within a 25 mile radius of the house, I can run downstairs and disconnect the coax, in the event that I forgot to previously do so.

I brought it to Field Day and there was one time during our operational period that it sounded. We disconnected, even though we didn't hear any rumbles. After a few minutes of no further warnings, we resumed our operations. The end of Field Day was another story entirely as I mentioned previously. The lightning strikes were quite close, highly visible and quite disconcerting. All the radios had been disconnected by that time, but it was still quite the spectacle to watch. When you see a lightning bolt touch down maybe 5 miles or so from where you're standing, you tend to get to your car pretty darn quickly.

In the event you don't have one of these, or perhaps thinking that since you'll only use it for Field Day, and don't want to spend the money - there are free apps that you can get for your cell phone. I have "My Lightning Tracker" on mine. There's a free and a "Pro" version available for about $4. I use the free version. You can set it so that you will get alerts anywhere from 200 miles away to an area just as close as you want to set it for.  It is generally accepted that a single bolt of lightning can travel as far as 10-12 miles from its source. Better to be warned and disconnect your transmitters than be caught up in some kind of Gooey-Kablooey lightning strike.

Dave KD2FSI went to Reverse Beacon Network and plugged in NJ2SP. This is where his FT8 signals were being heard. We have confirmed QSOs in the log for New Zealand (CW), France (SSB) and Australia (FT8), so I think that will pretty well dispel the notion that you can't be heard anywhere unless you're running power into a Yagi.  5 Watts into a wire can go pretty darned far!

Something else that happened that caused me to raise an eyebrow (like Mr. Spock - "Fascinating!") - my PowerWerx deep cycle battery petered out for the very first time.

I first noticed something was amiss around 2:00 AM when my power output on 80 Meters was only about 3 Watts. I was too concentrated on making QSOs to really think about it much, as I was still being heard and being answered. Then, when the KX3 actually started shutting down on transmit, I looked over at the little monitor that Bob W3BBO made for me, which was out of direct eyesight. It was reading 9.83 Volts. I have the KX3 set to where it will operate with a supply voltage as low as 10 Volts. I must have not recharged it sufficiently since I last used it from when I used it at the backyard patio table. That is being rectified as we speak. Luckily, W2LJ always has a back up plan:

I pulled my Blue Man Crew out of my backpack. This is the battery that I use for events like FOBB, QRP To The Field, the Skeeter Hunt and POTA activations. The very same one you see up top in the blog header photo. Normally, I'll use it for about 4 hours tops. On Sunday, it lasted from about 3:00 AM until 12:30 PM without a whimper. The only thing I did to play it on the safe side was to turn off the KX3's display backlight.

Lastly, at the end of tear down as we finished packing  the vehicles, Dave had mentioned that 2024 will be the 10th Anniversary of the founding of SPARC. We decided that Field Day 2024 will have to be an extra special one. We have a whole 10 - 11 months to plan for it.

72 de Larry W2LJ

QRP - When you care to send the very least!