06/29/2005 | K4TDP The 550 DX Club setup for the fourth year in a row using our club call, K4TDP. In the spirit of the contest we again setup in the field of AB4DN. Our participants this year were KE4YNY, AC0CL, W4ZX, KI4GSP, KU4J, AB4DN, and KD4BJW. We had 7 visitors come by our site to check things out. Even though we encouraged them to get on the air, we were not successful.

Brent, KE4YNY had a new radio this year and was eager to try it out and learn as much as he could about its operation. The radio is a Kenwood 480SAT. Brent is working to upgrade from the No-Code Technician to General. He will be well on his way to working DX after upgrading with this new radio.

Jesse, AC0CL has been working with us for the past 3 Field Days. He has upgraded since we started from no license to an extra class operator this year. Jesse is just short of 14 years of age and is quite the CW enthusiast. Jesse made 145 contacts this year mostly on 40 and 20 meter CW. We are all very proud of his accomplishments and look forward to him helping us out again next year.

Ed, W4ZX is a familiar Dxer that has been inactive for the past several years. We were glad to have him come refresh his keying fingers on the paddles. While the set of paddles he was using was not quite what he was expecting he quickly learned their feel and cracked out contacts on 20 CW.

This year was the first field day experience for Alex, KI4GSP who came out to aid in our setup. He was not going to be able to operate with the group, but we certainly appreciate the effort he lent us in getting our antennas in the air.

KU4J, AB4DN, and KD4BJW are regulars with this group and once again came to lend support in raising antennas and operating. Tim, KU4J was the mainstay of our contacts. AB4DN chose this year not to operate, but provided the field, food and great hospitality for the group. KD4BJW mostly provided logistics and aided in control-op for the GOTA station while KE4YNY was operating.

Two notable regulars that were missing this year were Vic, K4RVH and Mike, K4GU. Vic did lend us his portable garage and ground tarp for our operating position. We hope to have them both back next year with their radios and expertise.

For radios this year we were privileged to have two new radios present. The previously mentioned 480SAT and the Dayton radio the FT-1000 MV Field for KU4J -- both of these radios performed excellently. We also had on hand the wonderful ICOM 706MIIg and the 6-meter station was the FT-847.

We were able to use Dunestar bandpass filters for two stations and an ICE 419B bandpass filter for the GOTA. We need to improve filtering next year by having a stub filter for the 6m station to aid in keeping down interference.

For operating positions we used laptop computers running Writelog, wireless adhoc networking, K1EL Winkeys for auto CW and a PCMCIA serial card to run FSK.

We tried out some new antennas this year. We put up a 20m Moxon that we believe performed quite well. We had built a 15m Moxon, however had mast problems attempting to raise it and let it fell about 15 feet. Of course this busted the antenna up quite well. Another new antenna for us was a 75m dipole tuned for 3.850 MHz at about 32 feet for use as a NVIS antenna. This antenna worked really well for checking into our section traffic net and making 15m contacts. We continued to use some good performing antennas from the past; a 2-element homebrew quad on 6m, which yielded 130 contacts this year; a Battlecreek special 40, 80, and 160m vertical; and finally the versatile G5-RV antenna in an inverted V configuration.

Over all our performance this year was better than it has been. It seemed our setup and take down times were longer than before so we have work to do here. We made more contacts (1461) than any year we have worked. Next year we plan to continue our efforts and increase our ability to operate efficiently. 73 -- KD4BJW