[Scott Toth]

This has been sold. Thanks!

[Scott Toth]

Radio has been sold. Thanks!

[Scott Toth]

Here is additional information from Patrick, K2CPR and Field Day Committee Chairman:

Hey, GARA Members!

It’s almost here! We will be running 3A this year. This means 3 HF stations on emergency power. We will also be operating 2 bonus stations; a GOTA (Get on the Air) station for unlicensed, newly licensed and inactive Hams and a weak signal VHF/UHF station (6M/2M/440). I am still working on a satellite station, but if that fails we may attempt satellite communications through the VHF/UHF station. We only need to make one satellite contact to qualify for a multiplier!

We have a great line up of equipment this year! The three main stations will consist of a Yaesu FT-991, an Icom IC-746PRO and…the Crown Jewel of them all…an Icom IC-7800!

Field Day will again be held at:

Tannenbaum Historic Park
2200 New Garden Rd
Greensboro, NC 27410

Field Day starts Friday June 24th at 2PM with Field Day Setup! It’s a great opportunity to learn about different types of antennas and how they are erected. We will be using antenna launchers (think modified potato gun) to launch the ropes into the trees that will support the antennas! We will setup and test all of our antennas and setup all of our tents and other miscellaneous equipment.

Saturday, June 25th at 8am we will continue Field Day setup with getting all of our radios, generators, computers, mesh networks and other electronic equipment up and running.

Saturday, June 25th at 2pm on-air operations will officially commence. We will attempt to make as many contacts as possible for the next 24 hours!

Saturday, June 25th at 4:30 pm our cook out will commence! We will be serving hot dogs, bratwurst, pizza and salad. Be sure to RSVP on the GARA website at http://www.w4gso.org/cookout-rsvp/

Sunday, June 26th at 2PM Field Day on-air operations will come to and end, and we will begin breaking everything down.

Field Day Assignments:
Field Day Coordinator: Patrick, K2CPR, K2CPR@Yahoo.com
Cook-Out Coordinator: Scott, KV4UP, KV4UP@outlook.com
Field Day Station Captains:
Dave, AC4A, dmclin@gmail.com
Cameron AJ4TW, shiftlink@gmail.com
Jesse K4AX, n4bfdx@gmail.com
Jaime N4JAI (formerly KM4PPL), jaime.restrepo.pa@gmail.com

We have created a Google Drive with spreadsheets containing sign up sheets and equipment lists. Please look over all of the sheets and sign up where ever you’d like. We also have sign-up sheets for the GOTA station for mentors and operators. Please also look over the lists of station equipment as there may be something you can add. We are in need of lights for almost all of the stations to facilitate nighttime operations. Bug lights I think might be better if possible. It can get buggy in the park at night. Please also look at the backup equipment list and add anything that you may be able to supply there as well. Here is the link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VdQBbcxKjex0CvUA9fN8Hm5vuaCHbHNCv4lHlkiz-FM/edit#gid=2123735962

I am still looking for someone to Captain the Main Table. Minimal equipment, an HT for talk-in on the 15 machine if needed, the GARA banner needs to be hung, just some basic stuff. Please contact me if interested.

Patrick Moore, K2CPR
Financial Chairman
2016 Field Day Coordinator
Greensboro Amateur Radio Association

[Scott Toth]

Thanks Chris! That’s a really interesting read, and at the end of it all, I’m just glad that you were willing to give it a try and are on D-star. I do have a question: would you mind if I reformatted your three parts and listed them as an article on the site’s News page? I think it’ll draw more readers and that a lot of people will be interested in your impressions. I can link over to your forum posts too so that people can join the discussion. What do you think?

[Scott Toth]

Thanks Paul! I hope you had an excellent Thanksgiving with your family and made some nice HF contacts to boot. It’s like cake with two layers of icing!

[Scott Toth]

Thanks for all of the info John. I now have some reading to do…

That’s an awesome idea Cameron! I’m looking forward to that!

[Scott Toth]

I agree with Chris- the more available capacity, the better. It might be worth having a 30 amp 110V circuit put in that could power all of your equipment in one location rather than having multiple 15 amp circuits since most of your gear is probably on the same desk. Depending on the type of work the electricians are doing and how intrusive it is, it could be helpful to have conduits, chaseways or access panels installed in your shack to give you easier ability to run coax. Finally, depending on where your shack is located relative to your service panel, it would probably be good to have them add ground rods near your shack and bond them to the service ground. That way your RF and service grounds are bonded and you won’t ever have to worry about it again.

[Scott Toth]

Mark, I’m going to send you one now. Hopefully it has what you need. It might actually have more than you want, but it could be a good place for you to start!

[Scott Toth]

Here are a few I took:

[Scott Toth]

The new Arcom controller was ordered last week and has shipped! It should be in early next week. Upon receipt it will be assembled and tested, awaiting the arrival of the repeater itself. There is still no word on a ship date for that. We’ll keep you posted!

[Scott Toth]

Layman, let me get with Todd about it. We’ll get back to you ASAP.

[Scott Toth]

Any 32-bit application should work fine on a 64-bit OS because of technology built into modern processors, and because of a “compatibility layer” built into 64-bit Windows. Believe it or not, you may run into more problems when trying to install 64-bit applications on a 64-bit OS because of dependencies. To put it succinctly, since not everything has been migrated to 64-bit yet (think of the sheer amount of code that would need to be rewritten to do that), a shared file that would be called by a new 64-bit app could still be living in 32-bit land. The new app might not like that so much and will force you to install the 32-bit version of itself on the computer to ensure that it plays nicely with all of the shared files. This might be the case with most applications related to ham radio since their development base is probably relatively small and they probably use a lot of shared code.

BTW, the only thing 64-bitness really gets you is the ability to address more physical memory. Unless you think your ham app is going to use northwards of 2GB of RAM all by itself, it’ll probably suffice to run 32-bit versions of everything, even on 64-bit Windows.

Drivers will probably be a bit pickier, although hardware vendors have been pretty good about developing both 32- and 64-bit versions of most drivers given the amount of time 64-bit Windows has been around now. It seems to me that most ham gear interfaces use pretty standard hardware that requires fairly generic drivers, so most of that will probably be worked out for you already. In other words, Cameron’s right 🙂

[Scott Toth]

Looks good man! That was a lot of fun. People really seem to enjoy contacting a special event station, and most mentioned about how much they learned about the Battle of Guilford Courthouse after hearing about the station. I think that’s awesome.

[Scott Toth]

John, the only other way I’ve heard about personally is to use a tester called a “megger.” The testers are pretty expensive, but they’re meant to check insulation resistance, voltage, and continuity in cabling. George Thomas talks about how to use one around the 11:30 mark in this episode of Amateur Logic:

[Scott Toth]

“Tearing it up” might be a bit much, but I had a lot of fun anyway!

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