Thursday, June 25, 2015

Of Field Day and Changing Plans

Well ARRL Field Day is coming up fast. As all good plans go, sometimes they aren't meant to be and they have to be changed. No, I'm not talking about the 10 gallons of fuel that I need to take that for a bit I didn't think I had to.

Background:


Normally our club prepares for field day for normal weather or the possibility of storms later in the event. Usually during my time with the club we have not had to plan for rain all day on Saturday and the possibility of thunderstorms all day Saturday. In addition, I do not have a way to take photos in the rain as I don't have rain gear for my equipment and never even thought of it. This is in addition to the threat of lightning. Which is going to be a problem for all.

Additionally, I have a rather large data plan for my smartphone and I tether it to my Chromebook when it gets rather quiet at work. With tethering and portable hotspot I have the ability to connect to the internet on field day. Due to the weather threats this year I have volunteered to monitor real time lightning maps and radar sources to keep ahead of the weather.

What this means for myself and for W3CWC's operations:


This means I have less equipment I have to bring as I was planning on bringing the computer anyway, but no camera equipment needs to come. This also means that my scope of operations changes greatly. We are going to be using handheld radios to provide the communications for weather related information so that means everyone will need a handheld radio.

The showers and more importantly the thunderstorms means that we will have to scale back our operations. Our CW station will be limited to a few bands, we will be deleting our 40 meter station and other details I'm not familiar with yet. We will also be reducing the number of generator sets being used to provide for easier setup/take down and for additional safety (fewer exposed electrical connections).

This year we will have an emergency operations trailer on site with two operating positions, this will give us a few things. This will give us a dry and air conditioned space with diesel generator and two operating positions. Something we haven't had during my time with the ARA.

It is also possible that with the weather conditions we may not be able to set up the majority of our operations until later Saturday or early Sunday.

That's not all:


Poor ground weather conditions are not the only issue we are going to experience. In addition to the heavy rain and thunderstorms there is currently a forecast for a moderate (NOAA G2 Class) geomagnetic storm during the field day period. This may cause problems with making contacts on HF, but may enhance VHF contacts.

Forecasts:



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