Ocotillo Hams

April’s park outing of the Ocotillo Hams was a little smaller than usual as the HOA garage sale spring season kicked in for Don. Three of our rotating number turned up to the Veteran’s Oasis Park in Chandler on April 9th bright and early to the Curved-Bill Thrasher Ramada.

John (AI7AQ) and Norm (K7NWF) both brought different Mag-Loop antennas, while Lisa (me, KJ7DJR) turned up with a Wolf river coil mini-bullet on a MFJ tripod with custom measuring tape radials.

Setup was a breeze for the mag-loop posse, and only slightly more complicated for me. We were all setup by 9am, tuned up at different times for 10, 12, 15, 17 and 20m bands.

As usual, there was at least one technical issue to work through. This time Norm was the lucky target of the radio gremlins, filling in for Don and I. =)

Norm was encountering an audio problem with his setup, which turned out to be a case of RFI on the USB cables between his SignaLink and radio. One of the symptoms is that the SignaLink will flutter on and off, or the USB interface will just stop, and need to be disconnected and reconnected or the laptop rebooted.

This is a problem I’ve had more than a few times at home on different bands. I ended up resolving it by attaching some good size ferrites that I got over at Mouser.com to the USB cables. I usually wrap it around the ferrite about 5 times and then snap it closed.

Don’t bother with those tiny piddling little snap-on’s the size of a thumb though. They don’t do the job!

John’s RFI solution on HIS cables is a little more aggressive.. he has a toroid the size of an elephant’s bracelet wound with his cables. =) He giggles delightedly about it every time we meet at the park.

Lol. You want to see someone’s eyes light up like it’s Christmas, just ask John to show you his toroid.

Norm usually hasn’t had a problem with RFI in the park, so it may have been the different antenna, or a bad cable. John had a spare TripLite USB cable to loan, which seemed to get Norm up and running.

We made plenty of contacts, including Cuba, Ecuador, Canada, and a plethora of stateside QSO’s.

The weather was beautifully mild, the park was not as busy as the March outing, but we still got plenty of visitors dropping in to ask what we were doing, talk about ham radio and admire our antennas.

We wrapped up with lunch at Village Inn, and headed home, happy little hams for another month.

March’s portable radio gathering of the Ocotillo Hams group featured two different mag loops in use at Veteran’s Oasis Park in Chandler. Two vertical antennas were also tossed in the mix, but the fastest setup time and most contacts were definitely had with the mag loop configurations.

We set up early in the morning at the Curved-Bill Thrasher Ramada, which is close to the parking lot, and thus a pretty short walk with our gear in tow in an array of little wagons.

A small wedge of grass to the east of the ramada was filled with our antennas, cones, and radials, along with a plethora of warning signs to keep the other park visitors at bay. 😉

Now that the weather is warming up the park is quite busy on Saturdays and we had many interested people stop by to find out what we were doing.

The Reason for Hams to Practice Often

As many hams offer their services in event of emergencies, it really useful to get out in the field frequently to test your equipment and make sure it’s working as expected.

So far, there hasn’t been a single portable radio event where all the equipment has worked flawlessly for everyone. But this gives us an opportunity to correct problems before we end up in an emcomms situation in the middle of the night deployed far from home with non functioning equipment.

M is also for Midway

The bands were looking good and were so busy that it was hard to find an open spot to transmit, but some fun DX and US contacts were made, including one from a ham stationed on the USS Midway Museum (the museum ship parked in San Diego California) made with Norm, K7NWF.

Ocotillo Hams at Play 🙂

While there is quite a bit of work involved in going portable– packing up and hauling the gear to vehicles, and hauling it into the park and setting up, stringing wires, and radials etc.. this hobby is also supposed to be FUN.

So here are a few pictures of us happy hams playing on the air 🙂

Members of the Ocotillo Hams came out for Winter Field Day for the first time on January 29, 2022. It was a terrific portable event for us, and fun was had by all.

We met at Tumbleweed Park in Chandler, AZ, where we set up a variety of antennas on the lawn near the Cottonwood Ramada, which we rented for most of the day.

Our Equipment:

Among the antennas deployed were a home built Mag Loop, a random wire antenna, a Wolf River Screwdriver Antenna, and a Wolf River Otophone, set up as a dipole.

Rigs ranged from a Xiegu G90, to two Yaesu 891’s, and an Icom 7300.

Off Grid power for radios and tuners and computers was supplied by several battery boxes, and a halo car jump starter, among other things.

We used our phones as mobile hot spots for call sign data lookups.

Contest Conditions:

Of all the bands that were included in the contest, by far the most traffic was found on 20 meters, with 15 meters coming in second. There was very little traffic on 40 meters and 10 meters. In fact there was so much traffic on 20 meters that it was hard to get a word in edgewise to make contacts.

We rotated frequencies to allow everyone to take a swing at the busier bands, without interfering with each other.

Members in our little pod worked mostly RTTY and PSK-31 digital modes, though we did see some stations calling using Olivia, and a few modes we didn’t recognize by ear.

The One Heart Attack:

Safety being important when operating portable out where the general public passes by, we had our antennas “roped off” using bright orange mini cones and some RF danger signs..

…but there’s always that one person who doesn’t hear “KEEP OUT” from the signs and cones.

Towards the end of our field day operations we observed one fellow leave the sidewalk and wander across the lawn through the middle of all our antennas, ignoring cones and signs, completely oblivious to the danger that antennas could pose during transmission (RF burns or crispy critter level voltage).

When he stepped into the circle around the mag loop antenna which is low enough to the ground to really do serious harm if touched), we got a bit alarmed and warned him off vocally. Just kind of scary!

Next time we’ll probably bring the crime scene tape! Yiiikes.

After we packed up, we all met at Denny’s down the road for a light dinner before saying goodbye.

All in all it was a fun day for all, and we hope to do it again soon.