Notes from Field Day 2026
It was great to meet people in person that I'd only heard the voice of or emailed with. Learned about a few new antennas and radios. Enjoyed talking with members of the public about the role of radio in emergency preparedness and how fun it is (I was running the Get On The Air "open to the public try it out!" station). Everyone was nice. I met my MLA (provincial legislator). Got a free battery, free good hot food.
Things were a bit disorganized. The plan for the layout of the trailers etc. didn't survive contact with reality, gear and tools were missing, some folks hadn't read the contest rules, several of the generators they brought caused a bunch of radio interference, multiple people trying to use the same frequencies. Talking for many hours straight was exhausting. In the end I made 153 contacts, each worth 7 points, so 1,071 points ish. I haven't seen the final tally but I don't think anyone else got more contacts than I did despite me being on the worst frequency and a tenth of their power, and their contacts count for 2 points at most. I ended up using only my gear the whole time (including the chair I brought). I'm glad I wasn't in charge!
Over the summer I've been doing basically this but solo at parks and lighthouses around Nova Scotia. I do that as part of Parks on the Air. One of the visitors in the morning was a guy from the States that happened to be passing through and mentioned "someone named Aspen has been doing radio stuff at a lot of parks and I wondered if you knew her" to the event coordinator, and she introduced us and it was amazing! I am apparently POTA famous lol.
I brought some handheld radios programmed to family readiness frequencies that are free for public use without a license. One of the new hams that came brought his son, and I gave him one of those and held on to another. He went all over the place and sent me reports of what was going on over his little radio. We both enjoyed that quite a bit. That said, between the kids and the visitors and the press and the other folks doing radios, my talking is worn out. It's going to take me a while to recharge.
My little speech for the Get on the Air station went something like this:
The folks at the Salvation Army food truck are keeping me fed, and the St. Johns Ambulance Service folks are keeping me healthy, and the folks from the emergency management agency have provided us with a lot of fancy equipment. My role in today's exercise is Radio Operator, which means using my radio to make contact with other sites just like this one around the world. With our equipment, we can handle communications throughout HRM, but we can also reach all of Atlantic Canada, Ottowa, and internationally. Today, using gear that will fit in my backpack and the same power usage as an LED lightbulb, I've contacted stations east as far as Turkey, south as far as Brazil, and west as far as BC and Alaska. During those contacts, I can do voice communication like a phone call, as well as digital communication like sending emails, images, videos, spreadsheets and so on. The other stations on site have 10x the antenna and 10x the transmitting power that I do, allowing them to send information faster and further. All of this communication works without relying on the internet, cell service, an operational power grid, or corporate-owned satellite infrastructure. If our regular means of communication are disrupted, these organizations and people are ready to fill that gap. That's what we're here to practice today, but we also want to connect with members of the community to show them what's involved. I've got a radio right here specifically for use by members of the public, would you like to give it a try?
Comparing this to my usual POTA, I found it both exciting and exhausting. Having hot food prepared for me was nice, and I enjoyed the social aspects.. until my social battery ran out. In the future I either need to build up a better stamina for social interaction, or pace myself better. I very much did not enjoy the constant barrage of generator noise. I ended up using my own gear, in roughly the same configuration, so there wasn't much difference from POTA there. We were in an urban environment with buildings and car traffic and generators and people, so it felt much more removed from nature than I typically get at a park, and the views weren't as nice. It was fun, but I'm glad that isn't my usual operating environment.
My gear
Radio worked great as usual. The external battery adapter allowing for 10w helped, anecdotally, for the few hours that I used it. Most of my time was spent at my usual 6 watts. Crimping spade connectors onto the battery cable will make attaching it easier in the future. I need to pick up a charger for it. The new radials for the JPC-12 Settings made tuning the antenna easier, and I didn't have any issues with RF bugging out the laptop. I'm still going to get a common-mode choke for the antenna feed point but I think the radials have addressed most of the problem. The radials also hopefully reduced the ground loss in the antenna, so more of my energy made it into the air. I need to figure out how to measure that. It was also my first time using that antenna on 15m and I did that the entire first day with good results.
The antenna was set up further from the radio than I typically prefer, under the assumption that we would hook up a 100w transmitter to it at some point during the exercise and therefore needed it to be further away from people for safety. That didn't end up happening in the end. To handle that distance, I used a provided RG8x coax extension to my typical RG8x feed line. The extra 25' of RG8x means we lost about 8% to wire resistance heat, 0.37dB. There wasn't much I could do about it, that was the reality of the site geography.
The prototype winder for the radials worked well enough. I intend to proceed with my plan to construct one out of something more rigid and durable, probably hardboard. One winder for each pair of radials rather than a single monolithic winder will offer more flexibility and make it easier to deploy I think. Hook'n'loop closure to keep the wires tidy rather than twist ties, and longer so that there are fewer turns when putting it away and it lies flatter in the antenna case.
Elevating several of the radials helped with impedance matching, and I used traffic cones to accomplish that plus caution tape around the perimeter to keep people from touching the antenna while in use.
I didn't end up using everything I brought with me. I didn't use the end-fed half-wave or j-pole antennas, I didn't plug into mains power so I didn't use any of the chargers, didn't use the flashlight or the tarp or the toilet paper (thankfully). While I did use my own chair, I didn't have to use the folding table I had brought. I did feel like I had brought a lot of stuff. Even so, looking at the items that I used and didn't use, I'm not sure I'd choose to leave any of it behind if I were facing the same situation. Even for items that had been clearly communicated as "we'll provide this for you" didn't always materialize. Better to bring a little too much and leave it in the car than to bring too little and be stuck. The calculus on this will likely change if I don't have access to a vehicle next year. Keeping track of what I did bring, making sure it all got back home, and noting what I did and didn't use was facilitated by a packing sheet I wrote up the day before.
HexBeam
HexBeam antenna assembly: separate the 6 poles from the centre mast, untangle each one's two lines. Insert end of pole into bottom set of holes in mast. Connect the top string from far end of pole to the top hole of the mast. Connect the side string from the far end of each pole to the far end of its neighbor. Pick one spot to be the Pacman mouth. The radiating cables are colour-coded. Attach one end to its colour's screw terminal on the mast, then go around the hex popping the wire into each colour-coded clip, until you get to the other side of the mouth, where it returns to the screw terminal on the other side of the mast. Then you attach it to the base and hoist it, using the triangle plates to guy it. Don't forget to connect your feed line before you hoist it up. Even with multiple people working on it, it still took almost an hour to get it set up. It's big and heavy and expensive. But it seemed to work.
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