Field Day 2026 - Prep

Contesting

I absolutely love contesting! I’ve always loved the thrill of pile ups and just working through the pile up. Reality is, it’s not always like that. In fact, a large portion of the ham population may have never experienced that. POTA aside, I’m still itching to get into some contest.

My real goal has always been CW contesting…

This is something I watched for many years growing up around my ham radio clubs. Operators that were true masters of the art of CW. It’s always been a fascination and I’d spent much time watching these operators sit and work station after station at 30 word per minutes, like they were just talking…. oh and they were talking to other people sitting around them. It was like it was completely nature.

My code skills aren’t there yet! but I am planning to bring my station online with CW this year. Sorry to all of those good operators out there, I’ll be a bit slower.

The problem…

Well, not so much a problem, but a solution needs a problem. Most are probably thinking of heading out to their club’s field day site this year. Hitching up the RV, or packing the tents.

The truth is, for several years not, I’ve operated the D “home station” category. It might seem like a lazy way to go, and I agree it kind of is on my part, but I do have a few reasons.

Several years ago I started putting together a group of hams around my area. My home county (the county where I’m from), where I know everyone, didn’t have a real club. Most of the clubs were a bit of a drive away.

There was also some interest in operating Field Day as a group. I did and do not live in New Jersey anymore, but was very close anyway and we were all friends, so it seemed logical.

So we started a small club with basically the only intent being: field day.

We operated field day one year. A particularly disastrous occasion featuring thunderstorms most of the weekend, power issues, bands were frustrating to say the least, etc, etc.

Live got in the way for many years after and I ended up purchasing my new home with a bit property. As with everything life also got in the way for the others in this group. Including some medical issues and mobility issues for others.

So our core group shrunk a bit down to 3 and both have issues getting around and need accommodations.

So, we do field day remote.

In short: I host 2/3 radios and these operators can operate from their home setups, utilizing the things they need to be effective and comfortable.

This kind of gives me a fun challenge in building a station that can handle 3 100 Watt stations and not burn down, and I get to learn about all the technology involved. It’s lead to some interesting experiments in antennas and filtering and some frustrations with remote operating.

Summary of Field Day 2025.

All told, field day 2025 was a success in my book. We managed to work out quite a few bugs and deal with some Windows isms…. I hate Windows.

• Windows changes audio settings every time you RDP in! (WHY is this even a thing!)
• The signal messenger app (which I basically use for everything) interferes with the 403A antenna switch
• Manual antenna switching is a pain on the operator doing the switching
• Low band antennas need way more emphasis

But all in all, we had a mostly good time.

The Plan this year

Low bands (80/40)

This year, I set out to figure a few things out. First, we needed to be able to be on a single band on at least two mode. IE: 40 CW and 40 SSB at the same time.

Specifically 40 Meters is my target. My thinking being: the east coast is very populated. We’ve got a lot of states, a lot of sections up and down the east coast.

Generally with a good dipole I can work anything from Florida to Main and west to around Ohio on a good day.

So having two operators on these bands (2 modes if you will), would be ideal.

I’ll be honest here that I’m not sure how this story will end. I spent the past two weeks reading and I think with our antenna separation (a real challenge with my smaller property) and positioning, we might make it work on 40M.

I’d also planned some additional filtering with the understanding that I could null out part of the band with tuned stubs. I’m seeing conflicting information here, so we’ll see once I get more testing done here.

We were planning to do the same on 80 Meters but, we might be unable to do so. My original plan was to position 2 80 meter dipoles end-to-end from the back of my property all the way down the driveway. The furthest being at the end of the driveway, the other back here. Unfortunately, this puts the 80 meter antenna right over my shack and key down @ just 5 Watts on CW does some goofy things with my ethernet connection to both my computer and the 403A antenna switch. My assumption here is the RF is getting into the ethernet lines running form my network switch to these two devices through the attic. It doesn’t seems to bother anything else.

So the 80 meter dipole will need to move forward, and I don’t think there will be enough spacing between them to prevent interference. Again, we’ll see.

The high bands (20,15,10)

I’ve focused less on these bands for a few reasons.

We might be moving in a few years, and I just can’t sink thousands of dollars in concrete in the ground to support a tower that we won’t get back if or when we move.

My current configuration is a hex beam for 20,15,10 on the roof of my shop. This was the easiest place to install a roof tower. It’s worked great but for 20 meters it’s a bit low. The 20 meter performance hasn’t been what I’d hoped. I had a feeling it might be too low but we work with what we’ve got.

15/10 to the best of my knowledge haven’t been behaving lately. So my plan there is to dedicate my digital operator to jumping between these bands with openings and jumping in with CW where I can.

Switching

Switching has kind of been a bit of an annoyance. Okay it was downright painful last year.

The 403A Antenna genius supports 2 radios. To jump up to 4 radios, we’d have to invest in another 403A 8X2, the 8 A/B switch, and OM module.

Truthfully, we could have done this and probably should have. Shiny objects kept getting in the way. That’s a nice way of saying I bought other toys…

So the plan this year will be a bit different then last year. Last year I gave no consideration to which radio was on the switch or not.

This year I kind of came up with a reason for the following: Digital and CW station will share the 403A 8x2 switch.

My reason here is: if we can utilize stubs to filter out the SSB portion, those two stations will utilize the same stubs (null out the SSB portion of the band). While the SSB station would null out the CW end of the band. In theory anyway

Again, this all is based on my understanding that stubs can be leverage to null out one side of the band vs the other. Truthfully I don’t know. This was just me reading different things and my understanding.

So the way this would work is: the digital station can switch from 40 to 80 and all of their filtering goes with them. So when switching antennas: not just the antenna switches. The band pass filter and any stubs in-line go too. Same for the CW station.

Unless I got to SSB, I won’t have a need for the SSB stubs, neither will the digital station (who can’t go to SSB at all due to our configuration).

Execution

So far I’ve managed to get 1 40 meter antenna up. I did this deployment a bit different. Remember that two 40 meter antennas will be end-to-end just like 80 meters.

My distance is about 200 feet, from one tree line to another.

Assuming my calculations are correct: A 40 meter 1/4 wave dipole has a total length of 66 (ish) feet. Put a half wavelength between them (66 feet) we get 198 feet. Very Very close.

Truthfully, I’m scared to even publish this because I quite frankly have no idea if this is gonna work or fail miserably.

But, I guess we’ll never know until we try. Experimentation!

Rope, lots and lots of rope

I decided to run a messenger line instead of supporting the weight of both antennas on the wire. I also decided to utilize lighter weight coax. RG-8x from DX Engineering to the ground (50 feet of coax), we’re probably only riding at about 30 feet though.

So my messenger line goes from tree to tree, with a bit of sag to allow flex. I haven’t been able to get pulleys setup yet. The local “home store” only carrier nickel plated ones so… thats helpful, not.

So this will have to do.

An interesting experiment on execution I’m trying to a knot I learned about on some obscure youtube video call the Prusik Knot. Apparently this thing is used for climbing. How to Tie a Prusik Knot

I saw this knot and figured it’d be useful in tying off the center and ends of this antenna to the messenger line, while still allowing me to move the position if and when I needed to. I’ll be honest that when I put this on the messenger line, I thought it wasn’t going to hold but with a bit of tension it clamped onto the rope and held everything where I wanted. I left a bit of slack in the antenna itself to leave the strain on the rope, not the antenna itself. I’m sure the copper wires are pleased with that decision.

So what’s left…

Well, a lot actually. I’ve got loads to finish before Field Day!

• Finish setting up logging
• Finish with networking setup (we’re using tailscale which makes life easy though!)
• Setup a computer for the digital station to use
• Setup all the switching still (most is already in place)
• Setup a second table in my shack for our 4th operator (maybe!…. this could be fun!)
• Put the second 40 meter dipole (I just built) up
• Build the second 80 meter dipole, and put it up
• Move the existing 80 meter dipole… so my network doesn’t go crazy…
• Test everything
• Test everything again
• Get back to CW practice!

Hopefully this will be a good year for Field Day. I’m excited for it, really looking forward to doing CW this year. If I can handle it that is!