Last weekend was IARU Region 1 National Field Day and just like any other year the Oxford & District Amateur Radio Society, was taking part from the usual location at Worminghall, which is on the boundary of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire.
Setup began on Friday afternoon once all antennas, tents etc were on site, and luckily the tower is stored on the farm where we normally operate from!
The first thing to go up was the Crushcraft A4S which had been given a good clean a week or two before the weekend, so it was all nice and shiny and hopefully would perform a lot better also setup was 40-80-160m dipoles.
While another team worked on putting up the two tents one for operating and the other used as a cook tent.
On Saturday Dad (M3JFM) and I decided to cycle up to the site which was 22miles round trip with each leg taking about 1 hour 10mins according to the small computer on my bike.
Arriving on site around 11am the equipment was being put into the operating tent this year it was G4FON’s Yaesu FT2000D and G3KLH’s ICOM IC737 and 2 laptops running some custom software made by G4FON.
While this was being setup the receiving antennas where erected K9AY loop (built by M0DDT) and an 80m dipole after this there was plenty of time for drinking tea and having a good old chinwag.