"CQ, Field Day, CQ" (2009 Edition)

I almost left the "Field Day" out of the title, since I've let a week-and-a-half go by, but I decided to keep it. BTW, "CQ" is old telegraphy code for "Is anyone there?", and may or not have been coined because it sounded like "seek you." Certainly it was coined because the letters "c" and "q" are not a common combination.

Anyway. Field Day. When last the subject came up, I had been up all night two days before Field Day 2009 with a nasty case of food poisoning. By the time Mrs. Drang left for work Friday morning, I was empty, but I had been so sick, so often, that I had burned my esophagus and sounded like I was going through puberty again. So I wasn't sure I was going out.

Saturday morning my voice was still cracking, and Mrs. Drang accepted an invite from our friend Stitch Witch to go antiquing. I told her I felt up to going to the evening's pot luck, though. She had thawed out a 4 pound package of chicken wings, intending to make Chicken Adobo; while nowhere near the cook she is, I read the recipe and felt up to that. In the event, by the time it was time to start cooking, I felt well enough to go a little early, and actually participate in Field Day activities...

Which perhaps I'd better describe. Amateur Radio Field Day is held the last full weekend in June every year. It has two intentions: Get "hams" out of their shacks and into the field, or at least off "the mains" and operating off of alternative power sources, and also public relations, familiarizing the general public with our hobby--especially the emergency/disaster support functions--and, hopefully, recruiting new hams.

Field Day is also a contest--and "contesting" is a Big Deal to many hams. (Me, not so much.) Your station gets points in a variety of ways, including how many contacts you make, what band you make them, what mode you use to make them (voice, CW, digital, satellite...), how many transmitters you have, and what your power source is. (Emergency conditions, remember?)

Anyway, since I was feeling better, I arrived an hour or two before the potluck was supposed to start, and helped make a few contacts myself, and helped some of the "Elmers" log theirs. Most of our contacts were in California, Oregon, or here in Washington, but the club had a few in the Midwest and even on the least coast. I know that, in total, we made over 100 contacts, including a half dozen or so CW, which was about a dozen more than last year's total, with fewer operators and transmitters. (Many club members are members of other clubs as well, and either operating with those or at their own stations. There was also a marathon and the Pride festival going on, both of which were using hams for communications, so some club members were otherwise occupied.)

After the potluck--apparently last year's bordered on the disastrous, as they had more people than food, not a problem this year--we got back on the air, and then tore down. (Field Day actually goes all night, but most agree that, while atmospherics may improve after sundown, the amount of traffic does not repay most people's staying up...)

(Here's a link to a Seattle Slimes article on Field Day.)

***

So, today, I am reading The Adventures of Roberta X when Roberta makes a reference to "my other blog." What?! Roberta has another blog and I didn't know it? How can this be?

Well, for one thing, Retrotechnologist has only been up for a week or so.

But in one of her posts, talking about her "boat anchors", she admits to having an "appliance", that is, a radio which uses solid-state circuitry rather than vacuum tubes and the like.

I admit I was surprised, not to say shocked. "Now, Roberta, you know they didn't have those in 1937..." Which is snark, pure and simple, but got me thinking about the relative advantages to modern rig design and to the classics. The modern, current rigs can do more with less, doing things that Tom Swift could not have dreamed about. On the other hand, those boat anchors are almost nothing but user serviceable parts--less vacuum tubes, of course--unlike modern solid-state electronics. Due to the vacuum tubes, the "antiques"are probably less resilient under certain circumstances--i.e., dropping one off the desk; OTOH, they are pretty much impervious to Electro-Magnetic Pulse...

I dunno, do you like your tinfoil hat shiny side in, or shiny side out?

Which got me to thinking about a post Phil of Random Nuclear Strikes made shortly after moving into his current abode. As I recall, he accepted an invite to a meeting of the neighborhood watch, with some trepidation. Turned out that the neighborhood has it's collective head on pretty tight, and was making some fairly coherent emergency plans; "Way into neighborhood, way out, who has first aid training, who has medical conditions and/or might need specialized assistance"... etc. And I thought, "Handheld amateur radios that operate in the 2M band are relatively inexpensive, and so is the test for Technician class, which is all you need for that band..." (I may have commented on that post, don't recall...)

(Yes, FRS radios are cheap, and you need no license. They are also deliberately low-powered and short ranged, and limited. GMRS radios are slightly more capable, but require a license--which is more expensive than an Amateur Radio license!)

Not only that, you can get a mobile 2M rig--"mobile" meaning "car mounted"--that will interact with the repeater sites that are on just about every hilltop in Western Washington, allowing Phil (for example) to go to the parking lot at work in Seattle and talk to his wife at home. And, taking advantage of technology which (so far as I know) does not work with "boat anchors", that same 2M mobile rig may be able to utilize digital modes, like ICOM's D-STAR, allowing Phil (for example) to send text messages over Amateur Radio, including locational data.

Depending on the repeater network, you can also send slow-scan, or even full-motion video. Broadcast television may now be digital, but amateur television is not, necessarily. It may seem like frippery, but being able to send still or motion pictures over amateur radio may come in handy in a disaster or emergency; combining that with the ability to automatically send your location, means that you can aim your camcorder at the flooded-out bridge, and the folks at the other end--possibly in a city or county Emergency Operations Center--will know immediately who you are, where you are, and have a pretty good idea of what the status is at that location, without your having to fumble with a map or GPS, or getting distracted by the fact that you're about to get washed away...

***

Wow, three different posts, combined into one, and I managed to tie them together. A personal best...