Red Deer County will be hosting Central Alberta Amateurs to participate in the 2018 ARRL Field Day on June 23 and 24. We will be making and logging HF contacts and trying to send formal messages, among other Field Day Activities. We will be operating from the County Emergency Operating Centre Amateur Radio Station for the first few hours, then we will transfer to a co-located temporary portable 20-meter station to fill out the 24-hour period from local noon to local noon.

Amateurs in Central Alberta can help us make a strong showing. Mobile and home stations may participate in Field Day. The number of contacts we record is more important than the distance on Field Day. For us to count a contact, we will need to make a valid Field Day Exchange. A Field Day Exchange consists of the call signs, each station’s Field Day Class, and each station’s ARRL/RAC section. We will be VA6RDC 1F AB. Normally the communication is established first with the call signs, then the CQing station will then give its class and section, in our case, “1F AB”, or “One Foxtrot Alfa Bravo” or “One Foxtrot Alberta”. The responding station then replies with its Class and Section. The class would be:

• From a mobile station power your station will be Class 1C because of 1 transmitted signal at time
• From a home station using commercial power your station will be Class 1D.
• From a home station using emergency power your station will be Class 1E.

Your station’s section in this area will be Alberta, also said “Alfa Bravo”.

We can count a contact with you only once on any band-mode but we can count you again on another. Contacts on the 60, 30, 17, and 12-meter bands may not be counted. “Modes” are voice, CW, and digital.

Classes A, B, and F are also described in the Field Day Rules at http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Field-Day/2018/2018-Field-Day-Rules.pdf .

We are trying to find a young person of 18 years or younger who would join us for up to 2 hours on June 23 to make and log at least one Field Day Contact. If you think one of your young acquaintances could find that interesting, persuade him or her, then have him or her make contact with John, VA6SJA, by emailing to va6sja@rac.ca or by telephoning John at 587-272-2699. This young person does not require an amateur radio certificate.

We are also looking for an amateur who likes to make contacts via amateur radio satellite with simple equipment. This is to make a Field Day contact from very close to the County EOC station.

We will be also asking for 2-meter and 70-centimeter simplex FM contacts for stations within range. The rules forbid using 146.520 MHz, so we will try to use 146.490.

Particularly between 12 noon local and 4:00 p.m. on Saturday we will do our best to make these contacts:

At 10 minutes after the hour, we will call CQ Field Day on 146.490 MHz FM in hope of contacting you to make and log a valid Field Day contact.  When we have run out of 2-meter contacts we will shift to 446.030 MHz FM and call CQ Field Day again. We hope to work each of you on that band too!

As far as feasible we will continue this schedule after that until noon on Sunday.

We could score even more points by making 2-meter digital contacts. Are you interested in digging out your PK232 Packratt or similar terminal node controller from 20 years ago and setting it up to make a keyboard to keyboard packet radio contact? There are also now programs that generate the packet tones directly in the computer sound card. If you are interested in trying 2-meter packet this Field Day contact John, VA6SJA, by emailing to va6sja@rac.ca or telephoning 587-272-2699 so he would make the effort to ensure there is a TNC at the county.”

We thank Red Deer County for facilitating this event.

John Allen, VA6SJA

Chairman – Field Day 2018”