Contest Rehearsal Day!

The FAMPARC Contest Team had a great rehearsal day today :-).

It started with Roy GB and his torch at 6:30am scoping out the site for the 80-metre antenna! Now that's commitment! The rest of us arrived around 9:30 am and got stuck into it. Outside, we erected the 80-metre dipole, an 80-metre vertical and a 160-metre dipole.

Inside, we setup the two temporary stations for 80-metres and 160-metres, along with logging computers. It was a lesson in modern technology because each computer had a different interface to the accompanying radio! One used a USB cable, one used ethernet and the third used the proprietary Icom CI-V protocol. Thanks to David DLR and Peter IJ for loaning their equipment.

By lunch time we finally had it all connected and working. Patrick APL had done a great job providing the data cabling inside the clubroom, so it was very neat setup. After a cup of tea and a snack, we started testing the cross-band interfence. As expected, there is some cross-band effect, but nothing that cannot be easily managed. When everyone was happy, we dismantled everything and discovered that packup is a lot quicker than setup!

It was a great rehearsal day! We bumped into all the issues we expected, but we resolved them. The team is looking forward to the Trans-Tasman Contest on 18 July.