The Thornbury and South Gloucestershire Amateur Radio Club (TSGARC) held its first ever field weekend over the late May 2015 bank holiday weekend. This post is the first of three that describes what happened, what went well, not so well and thoughts for the next time….
Although the event was to take place over the Saturday, Sunday and Monday it was clear from early planning that additional time would be needed to establish then remove the camp, equipment and clear the site. Early planning also identified two key items essential to the success of the weekend: large, dry tents and toilet facilities. Fortunately the club, via John, had access to several 6m x 4m tents and had sufficient funds to hire a chemical toilet from Abbey Loos of Gloucester.
Another key feature of the event was a barbecue would be held on the Sunday afternoon assuming it was permitted by the notorious and traditionally wet bank holiday weekend weather. As it turned out, fortune smiled and the weather remained dry.
So, early planning done, 10 members arrived on the Friday morning at 10AM and work started to erect the 2 large tents. One was to be the radio/operating tent, the other cooking/hospitality etc. This two-tent idea was conceived so that noise and conversations could be kept to a minimum in the radio tent to provide a quiet environment for the operators. The 2 tents were erected in a non-overlapping ‘L’ shape with the apex towards the South West. The intention was that this would provide a space, sheltered from the wind, in which the BBQ could be held and a space, in the outside corner, for the 12m trailer tower. This configuration proved successful.
With ample hands the erection of the tents proved a quick and easy job. Attention then turned to getting the stove connected, for that much needed cuppa, and moving the trailer tower to its chosen position. Around this time someone noticed that the pin which secured the winch drum to its assembly was missing rendering the winch unusable. Show during transit this pin had come loose and fallen out. The unusable winch would have been a disaster had we been in a remote location, however, the land owner was able to provide a suitably sized bolt which saved the day. A quick phone call later and John (M0HFH) had the necessary information to machine another pin which he installed the following day. We were lucky John was at work and had the time to make a replacement. Thanks John.
The second key item, the chemical toilet, arrived around lunchtime which was excellent timing and just when it was needed 😉 Compared to the loos I’ve experienced before, at music festivals such as Glastonbury, it was spotless – a real palace! The only negative was that it didn’t have any loo roll – the holder was empty… Fortunately, loo roll was one of the items early planning had identified and thus we had a good supply – happy camping and second disaster avoided 🙂
As it turned out the most time consuming task during setup was the elevation of the trailer tower. This was not expected and occupied pretty much the whole of the afternoon, completing just in time for the clubs VHF net at 20:00hrs. One of the first renovation jobs the club on the trailer tower was to replace all winch cables as they were in poor condition. In doing this job someone had the bright idea to replace the old cables with string so that when it came to installing the new cables they could be installed quickly and correctly. This was a great idea, but it was predicated on the assumption that the old cables were correctly installed! 
As it happened they weren’t and we thus spent hours re-routing the new steel cables so they did not catch or rub unduly on the lattice members. It was just as well that we had a generous helping of tools, spanners etc as this could have been the next disaster! Anyhow, all turned out well and we got the TSGARC Yaesu G-600RC rotor installed and a 9 element Yagi (Part No. 220089) from Tonna for the 2m band installed on the top. Tower raised, the antenna was at about 13m above ground. With about 30 minutes to spare we were setup and ready for the clubs VHF net.
Using a highly directive antenna for a net is not ideal but on this occasion the majority of members who normally take part where in the field. The remainder, were fortunately, located along roughly the same beam heading 🙂 Excellent signal reports were obtained from all stations. Actually, that was as no surprise as 50w into an antenna with 13dBi gain at 13m above ground is going to work well! The antenna was also deliberately attached to the tower to be vertically polarised thus aligning with the convention that VHF, FM activity is vertically polarised.
At this point its worth mentioning an issue we had with the rotor. Just prior to the weekend Paul (M0ZMB) had reconditioned the clubs rotor, installing new multi-core cable and some nice weather resistant plugs. Unfortunately, the length of cable from the rotor to the first plug was less than the height of the tower and this meant the cable could not be placed in the towers cable cleats without snagging. So instead the cable was left to run free by the side of the tower moving about slightly in the light breeze. On one occasion when raising the tower no one spotted that the plug had become snagged by a lattice cross member. The resulting load ripped the cable from the plug and shattered the connector. The electrical connections were easy to repair but it was clear that a new, longer length of cable was needed that could be run through the cleats without snagging and thus an emergency shopping trip was needed the following day 🙁
And that was pretty much the first day – setup day.
Andrew
G0RVM
