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Field Day 2013 (NG0R + N2BEN)

Our yearly tradition continues.... 

Camper Cabin #3 at Hayes Lake State Park

The inside of the basic cabin

Burgers on the grill for a couple of meals

Ben managing the grill

Brats for a couple of meals

Ben eating lunch on Saturday inside the screen porch of the cabin.

A visiting neighbor from the forest

A visiting neighbor from the lake

Our operating position inside the screen porch

The Arduino PS2 keyboard keyer (NG0R design)

Ben working some CW

John (me) working some CW

Ben and I have been operating Field Day together last few years since he got his license. Sometimes we operate with a club in the typical 2A, 3A, 4A format and sometimes we operation 1B with just the two of us from a camping location.

This year we rented a camper cabin at Hayes Lake State Park near Roseau, MN. That is about 300 miles north of our home. The small cabin makes the trip low risk should we run into weather issues like storms or cold weather. The cabin had a screened porch so that made the bugs a low risk issue which was critical given our location. 

We used our KX3, a homebrew Arduino PS2 keyboard keyer, paper logging, a 40m dipole, and a random wire antenna.  It was a semi-minimalist approach since we were operation a 1B-Battery station again this year.

Our Q count was down this year compared to last year. It also felt like we worked much harder to make the Q's and we put in a LOT more time. The bands were great Friday night be the event started. The bands were poor on Saturday. The bands were decent Sunday morning but we ended early as rain moved in and we wanted to pack up the car before things got too wet outside. 

Last year we had about 102 Qs which were primarily CW. 

For 2013 we had 62 Q's
  

QSO summary

QSO summary

While we did not have a ton of Q's in the log we pushed some new areas for us.

  • It was much more minimalist compared to previous years
  • We were setup with time to spare
  • We even got to take a nap prior to the event starting
  • We used a cabin for op position
  • This was our first major outing with the KX3
  • We used a homebrew Arduino PS2 keyboard keyer
  • We used paper logging

The event was fun. We are already working on changes & enhancements to our plan for next year. 

73 de NG0R

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Online Class (project)

I put together my project for my online class while on the road visiting some of my wife's extended family in Iowa. 

Screen Capture

Screen Capture

If you follow the link give it a 10-20 seconds to load up the audio files and then click in the middle of the frame so that it will start up.

 https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/147999247/site/index.html

It should work fine on a Mac, and iPad, and an iPhone. I have not had a chance to test with an Android device or Windows/IE yet since I am on the road while I am working on this project.  

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Field Day 2013

This weekend is the big weekend... 

2013FieldDayLogoWeb.jpg

The plan for 2013 is for N2BEN (12) and myself to drive up to the Roseau, MN area (300 miles away) to operate from Hayes Lake State Park. We will operate a 1BB station. (1 transmitter, 2 ops, battery, QRP) 

This will be the first Field Day outing for our KX3. Ben will probably operate PSK31 and I will probably focus on CW. This will also be our first year of paper logging and no computer. The last few years Field Day has been a camping event for us with a new location almost every year to keep it interesting. 

This year the weather should be pretty interesting as the dew points will be in the 70's and strong "lifted index" values in most of Minnesota. 

73 de NG0R

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Arduino tools

I hacked my Arduino Uno.... 

I removed the dip for the ATMEGA328

I removed the dip for the ATMEGA328

To facilitate the ability to program standalone chips I removed the ATMEGA328 and the dip socket. I milled out an adapter board so that a ZIF socket can attach via standard header pins.

This has been a awesome tool during prototyping. I start my projects with an Arduino Nano on a breadboard. Once I am ready to start making circuits boards I will out a board that includes space for a zif socket. I then can add & remove the mCu with firmware updates very quickly without the added complexity of an ICSP. 

73 de NG0R

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Arduino Keyer

I milled out another prototype tonight.... 

A circuit board hot off of the CNC mill

A circuit board hot off of the CNC mill

The board layout in Eagle

The board layout in Eagle

The latest schematic for tonight's board

With a little bit of luck this might the board that goes into the Hammond project box and on the road for Field Day 2013. If time permits on Monday I will try to stuff the parts and run a quick test before I go to far down the path of mounting it into the project box.

73 de NG0R

 

PS...

  1. I thought that I had fixed the error in the schematic for the reset pin(1) but it is still incorrect. I simply cut the trace for this board and other than that it worked fine.
  2. I probably should have drilled out all of the holes with a smaller bit than what I used. I used a bit sized for the ZIF holes vs. simply for the standard through-hole parts.  It worked fine but was less than ideal.
  3. This board did in-deed end up being the one to go into the Hammond project box and will be going out for Field Day 2013.