2009 Field Day                               Home

ARRL Field Day 2009 was held June 27 - 28, 2009 on the grounds of the Tri-Community Fire Department, Station #3 on Bill Jones Road in Apison, TN. This was the first public venue that the TVDXA has operated Field Day in, in several years.

Our primary objective was to show the public that Ham Radio and the TVDXA could operate in abnormal situations in less than optimal conditions to meet head-on and overcome the many challenges of emergency communications preparedness. Other objectives included our long standing goal to work as many stations as possible on any and all amateur bands and to have FUN.

This year we operated under the class designator of 2A-TN having two (2) HF transceivers set up as our primary stations. We also had three (3) supporting stations set up operation, one on 6 meters, one on UHF/VHF attempting to contact other stations via satellite and one GOTA station set up for the public to operate and become familiar with Amateur Radio.

Up until this year our emergency power was sourced by a gasoline powered 5KW generator. This year we elected to use batteries as our source for power. The generator was on hand just in case; however it was not needed as the batteries seemed to work just fine. At the end of our 24 hour event, the two primary stations could still operate around 70 watts output.

We had 54 individuals sign our visitor’s log, 20 being TVDXA members and 34 being guests. We had invited the Collegedale and Chattanooga ARC members to stop by and we were pleased that some from each club dropped in. We also had an elected official drop by as well as several individuals from a “served agency”. We had three youngsters operate radio for the first time and had several visitors inquire how they could become members of TVDXA.

Total contacts this year 1417. Total points (official) will be tabulated by ARRL. Thirteen of the fifteen bonus categories were met adding significant points to our grand total.

The field day committee will critique this year’s event and make some recommendations for further improvement to the next year committee. We consider this year’s field day event to be very successful.   

Field Day Committee Members: Paul Pagano, Jim West, Ken George, Dennis Thomason, Gary Grogg, Dick Wilson, Howard Moll, Kenny Rogers and Tab Williams

Site Pictures  Pictures taken Saturday Feb. 21, 2009

 

 

 

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