The Stanford ARC will be operating Field Day again this year from Site 530 in the Stanford Foothills, the location of its permanent station. You can get more information about the station and its location from the Club's website at http://www-w6yx.stanford.edu.
Field Day will take place this year on Saturday and Sunday, June 24-25, 2006. Operating activities will begin at 11:00 am local time on Saturday and continue for 24 hours.
The co-coordinators of this year's Field Day effort are:
Set-up activities:
Set-up will be taking place Friday starting around noon into the evening. Please come on up and help if you have time. Most of the activity will be in the late afternoon into the evening.
Operating schedules:
The operator schedule is set forth on the club website at the following link: http://www-w6yx.stanford.edu/FD2006/fdsked06.html. This is just a starting point and positions will move around to accommodate additional ops and address band conditions and levels of activity.
Operators should arrive well in advance of their operating stint to get familiar with the operating set-up, including the logging software (WriteLog) if new to them. In the case of the first set of operators, we request that you be on site at your station by 10 am on Saturday.
Food and drink:
This year, for a change, we actually are getting a bit organized on food. Carol, W6GEM, has purchase various food, including snacks and food for a barbeque Saturday evening (with Mark Lawrence arranging the grill and flipping the burgers). However, to date, we have no organized effort on drinks. Please consider bringing drinks, coolers and ice to supplement the on-site refrigerator that will likely be full of food. As we are expecting over 40 people over the course of the weekend, this is a big gap in our planning. We will likely commission a run on for bagels or donuts and coffee for Sunday morning.
Additional equipment needs:
Bring headphones/Heil prosets if you have them. Also, we have run short of 1/4 inch and 1/8 inch "Y" jacks. Headsets with mini-phone jacks are especially useful.
We could also use two or three more simple external keyers and keyer/ptt line LPT computer interfaces . Other than those items, we believe we are "good to go" at this point.
Site Access:
If you do not have key access to the site, the best thing is to call the shack -- 650-856-2737 -- to arrange for access. The station is located in the Stanford Foothills behind campus near the 50 meter dish visible from Route 280. More information regarding the club and the station location can be found on the club website: http://www-w6yx.stanford.edu/site530.html. Worse case, you can get to the site by parking on Stanford Avenue near the intersection with Junipero Serra and walking about a mile up the road into the Foothills.
One important note if you are driving up to Site 530:
WHEN DRIVING IN THE STANFORD FOOTHILLS, KEEP YOUR SPEED BELOW 10 MPH AND BE COURTEOUS AT ALL TIMES. REMEMBER THAT WE ARE "INVITED GUESTS" OF THE UNIVERSITY. IT IS LIKELY THAT HIKERS AND OTHER FOOT TRAFFIC, WITH WHOM WE SHARE THE ROADS, WILL BE OUT IN SIGNIFICANT NUMBERS THIS WEEKEND, ESPECIALLY IN THE MORNINGS AND LATER AFTERNOONS. RIGHTLY OR WRONGLY (IT IS NOT RELEVANT WHICH), OUR PRESENCE ON THE ROADS/FOOTPATH IS AN ANNOYANCE TO THEM. DRIVING BEHAVIOR SHOULD BE ACCOMODATING AND CONSISTENT WITH MINIMIZING THE POTENTIAL FOR CONFLICT.
Generator:
The generator is on site and ready go, we have about 32 confirmed participants (which means we'll probably have a total of 40 or so based on past experience, so this is shaping up to be a great Field Day exercise.
We are planning a class 5F operation, meaning 5 full-time simultaneously active stations, not including the GOTA ("Get On The Air" station) and one vhf/uhf station. We are selecting this category in part so we can attempt a new all time record in our 5th FD category, but also because we believe this level of activity is best suited to anticipated propagation conditions.
W6YX holds the all-time records in the following categories: Class 6E (2001); Class 7E (2002); Class 7F (2003); Class 8F (Class 2004) ; and Class 6F (2005) . One of our goals is to achieve a score in the range of our last-year top ten score, with a smaller number of transmitters.
The breakdown of stations will be something like the following:
GOTA Station: The Get On The Air (GOTA) station will operate under a separate callsign from our general operations, using "K6SU" or "Kilo Six Stanford University", thanks to the fact that K6UFO had the presence of mind to grab that call as a club call when it recently became available.
The GOTA station can support multiple operators and is intended to be a low pressure environment for less experienced operators to learn to operate in a Field Day situation. It'll be fun, although we do hope that the station will achieve maximum contacts permissible for the GOTA station under the rules ( 500) ( contacts can exceed the maximum, but we only get credit for 500). In order to maximize bonus points, each GOTA operator should plan on making 50 or 100 contacts. Under the new rules, the GOTA station will likely be a large contributor to our score. We have many ops interested in operating the GOTA station. Curt, W6RQ, will be the initial GOTA coach. Please contact me or Curt if are interested in assisting as a coach.
VHF/UHF Station. With the new towers and antennas, we have the makings of a terrific VHF/UHF station this year. We have many interested operators. Leif will help coordinate, but will not be able to be on site on Saturday until 7 pm. There is still a fair amount of set-up work required to get the station ready for this weekend, including installation of the 440MHz yagi and reconnecting the rotator controls and antenna feedlines.
The Stanford Department of Public Safety has delivered to the site its new very large, quiet, diesel generator. This will provide ample power for our operation.
Ken has taken care of publicity by issuing a press release to the local media regarding the W6YX Field Day activity.
We need someone to volunteer to compile a record of the bonus points earned. In many cases, this is accomplished by taking a digital photo of the activity (K6OWL and others). Bonus point categories include (each worth 100 points unless otherwise mentioned):
We will use WriteLog again this year as our logging software to simplify networking and voice keying at the phone stations. Mark Aaker has been working away on this during the past week and we think we're close to having it up and running. This is probably the most important and biggest job for the balance of today.
So, things are shaping up for another fine Field Day. If you desire to participate and have not yet let us know, please send an email to John Fore, W6LD, JFore@wsgr.com. Also, please let us know if you have any preferences for FD activity (e.g., operating ssb or cw, etc.)