Freeze Your B____ Off Winter Field Day Summary
Call Used: N4BP Callsigns of Operators: N4BP, W4OVU
Category: Multi-Op Number of Novice/Tech QSO's: 0
QTH: FL Highest Power: 5W Lowest Temp: 70F
Rig: TS-130V Antenna: Horizontal trapped vertical
126 QSO's, 127 QSO points
34 States, 3 Provinces, 3 Countries = 40 S/P/C
Mults: Field Location X4, Battery Power X2, 60+ F X1
Final Score: 40,640
Comments (long):
For the past thirty years I've been considering an operation from the
550 foot platform of the 1000 foot transmitter tower of WPLG-TV in North Miami.
The closest we came was a few years ago when we sloped a half wave 160M dipole
from the platform to the woods north of the transmitter site. It was a dismal
failure even though we also ran out a 500 foot Beverage.
Even before the FYBO was announced, W4OVU and I decided that this would
be the year for a Field Day effort from that platform. The FYBO was perfect
for a trial run! We hastily made our plans, gathered what we thought we would
need, and headed for the TV tower at about 9AM on Saturday. It took us two trips
to transport all our goodies up to the platform. The elevator inside the tower
is quite cramped, so Bruce ran the controls from inside the cab while I carried
our two plastic lawn chairs on the roof.
On the ground, the wind was very light, but quite brisk from the South
at 550 feet. We found a relatively sheltered spot behind some equipment cabinets
to set up our table and chairs. We first set up the station - TS-130V and
notebook computer with a deep cycle marine battery under the table. We next
attacked the antenna. I had miscalculated the diameter of the rail on the
platform and my antenna bracket was too small to fit around it. So we simply
attached the mounting bracket to one of the smaller angled cross members. The
antenna to be used was my old faithful 4 band trapped ugly vertical, made about
thirty years ago from a discarded tri-band Yagi. We mounted it in a horizontal
position, broadside to the NW/SE and supported it near the top with nylon string
tied to the tower. A second string was attached to keep it from swaying. No
attempt was made to tune the vertical, but the SWR was already within acceptable
parameters for all four bands.
Setup was completed at 11:45, just 15 minutes before the start of the
FYBO. No time to try any test QSO's, just a quick briefing on the rules and
how the computer logging would be handled. A quick check of 15M determined
that we would begin operation on 20M. We got off to a slow start, but it seemed
like our setup was working about as well as we could do. After about 50 Q's,
our notebook computer started beeping and then the screen went dark. Later we
determined that the 7V outboard regulator had gone intermittant. Fortunately,
we had prepared for that possibility and went to paper logging.
We both struggled desperately to pull many weak signals out of the
noise, often without success. It became obvious that we were getting out much
better than we were hearing. The high noise levels were from two categories.
The tower has many commercial antennas side-mounted at various levels including
an antenna at 750 feet for WLYF-FM. There has to be an incredible number of
intermod products generated with all these transmitters being keyed off and on.
Another noise source was the elevator cable - 1000 feet of cable inside the
tower swaying with the wind. I've noticed in the past that, when travelling
by the WLYF antenna on the roof of the elevator, I could draw an arc from the
cable with a screwdriver. Much of our noise must have been from that cable
brushing against the inside of the tower.
The weather was both a curse and a blessing. Our score had no chance
of being competitive with a X1 temperature multiplier; it never dropped below
70 degrees. But it was a beautiful, clear night with a full moon. We had a
fantastic view of the city lights in both Miami and Fort Lauderdale, and barely
needed even a sweater to keep us comfortable. For meals, Bruce hit the local
Wendy's to bring us lunch, and later I took the trip down the elevator to
procure dinner at Popeye's.
We quit at about 10:45PM since we knew it would take us some time to
get all our gear to the ground and back home. It turned out to be a wise move
considering the comedy routine we were about to execute. The first load was
transported to the ground without incident leaving only the table and chairs
for the second trip. At the platform, we manuevered the chairs between tower
struts to the top of the elevator while Bruce held the table inside. The table
was simple to unload at ground level, but we struggled with those @#$%^& chairs
for a good 15 minutes, trying to figure out how to get them to the outside of
the tower! It had to be a funny site (if anyone were watching) to see us
rotating them in every possible position and try various areas of the tower to
fit them through. We finally made it and took off for home at about 11:30.
All in all, a successful operation. Even if we can't improve on the
receiver noise situation, we should do much better in the "real" Field Day since
a great number of the stations to be worked will be in the 100W category. We
are even contemplating a return next winter to try a 160M contest...
Thanks to all the stations who responded to our many requests for
repeats during our QSO's! Apologies to those we just couldn't pull through.
Maybe now you understand why we seemed to ignore you, it wasn't intentional!
Hope y'all had as much fun as we did. And last, but not least, many thanks
to the Phoenix ScQRPions and AB7TT for coming up with the FYBO!
Bob Patten, N4BP
Plantation, FL
n4bp@shadow.net
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