NATIONAL FIELD DAY

We're set up and ready to play radio

Field Station VK4ION participating in the WIA National Field day, Sat. 23rd October.
The old farm Ute became 'Base Camp'.

When Century Batteries said it was ok to drop by and borrow some batteries - it was lucky we took the ute as each one weighed 60kg.

Proudly displaying the Century Battery banner the field station consisted of 1 old ute holding FOUR 450ah batteries, a 40/80M vertical on the bullbar (actually an old CB Stationmaster aerial converted for AR use) and mounted on the rear was a 20M Vertical with ground planes.

If you look to the right in the picture above you'll see a Dipole. That's an E.N.V.I.S. dipole mounted at 1.8metres (6feet) above the ground. It was the success story of the field day, working as close in as Mackay and out to Geelong & Guam).

All antennas break down into short lengths and pack away, forming part of the VK4ION emergency kit.

The two transceivers used were Yaesu FT-857D each directly connected to a Century Battery. Antenna tuners were conneted although they weren't needed on the 40/80 Vertical.

Despite the extremely poor radio conditions club members VK4ION & VK4MAX worked the full 12 hours from 8am to 8pm. During the day members VK4JRO, VK4SX, VK4JM, VK4JJ and VK4UD made the trek out to Avondale to check on the progress and help make contacts.

We had lamingtons for morning tea, gourmet sausages and home baked rolls for lunch. Pizza and BEER for happy hour snack and then Burgers for dinner with home made Fries and more BEER. Who's the luckiest club in Australia to have such a catering service?

So yes... it was a pity about the conditions on the day but we did prove the battery requirements of our field stations running Yaesu FT-857D Tri-band tranceivers (useful data for the new portable WICEN stations which are on order) and we had a darn good time, swapping antennas, checking performance levels all while sitting in the bush and communing with nature.