St. Mary's County, MD - ARES

            Thanks again for all who were able to help in this years Field Day event! For those with WINLINK, I did send a few messages from the site so when you get a chance go ahead and check.

• The ability to build an End Fed Half-Wave on the fly is a great skill to have! W4NRG was able to put one together in about 30 minutes and it was instrumental in all the 40m contacts we made after 2am.
• A small dipole made by Windcamp, able to handle 100watts performed very well! The Windcamp website has good information about it (https://www.windcamp.cn/productinfo/372468.html) but no link to buy one. They can be purchased on Amazon here: https://a.co/d/0b1yJnl9
• All our power was provided by batteries, and we all had Anderson PowerPoles so we could easily switch things out and keep operating. There are some knock-off versions that are less expensive, but I recommend staying with the real things: https://powerwerx.com/anderson-power-powerpole-sb-connectors
• Not all battery chargers are your friend! I was using a 4A charger I purchased through Bioenno and we had no noise, but when a higher output charger was put in service, we experienced a significant amount of noise on 40m (sorry Anthony!). So, prior to field use, it is a good idea to check to see if the charger you may be called on to use (and this includes solar charge controllers) could cause a noise problem and interfere with your ability to effectively operate.
• Know the power draw of your equipment. We had plenty of extra LiFePo4 batteries to keep us on the air, and we did not worry about a power plan, but in an actual event if we must rely on solar or lower output chargers, the recharge cycle WILL be significantly longer than the discharge cycle of the batteries (as an example; 6 hours of operating and 12 hours to recharge means you need to have at least 3 batteries). There’s a lot more math involved there but you get the idea. The 10AH Nermak LiFePo4 batteries I had for the talk in station and as stand-by I also picked up on Amazon: https://a.co/d/0cDFuvSQ
• Using a Faraday Cloth can improve a vertical antenna performance. The one I have, I purchased on Amazon: https://a.co/d/0a6FTMUS. This works if the antenna is within a foot of the ground, but I have not done any elaborate testing to see if there is any effect on one mounted to a tripod about 3 feet in the air.
• The Alpha antennas we were using were 6-80m HF MIL 2.0 FMJ (https://www.alphaantenna.com/product/6-80-meter-hd-fmj-portable-hf-vertical-dipole-antenna/)
• The other vertical was a Wolf River Coil (https://www.wolfrivercoils.com/index.html)
• The “Fox” we were using is based on the Byonics MicroFox 15 (https://www.byonics.com/mf) in a waterproof box (https://a.co/d/0au3I74r)

Those were the big take-aways for me. If anyone else has additional lessons learned or suggestions, please let us know!

I am very proud of how we all worked together and each time we setup and do an event I cannot help but be impressed at the knowledge and skills you all bring to the team and your willingness to share that knowledge. 

Thank you all, for what you do to help our community!