AMSAT Director Contests and Awards, Bruce Paige, KK5DO reminds you
that time of year is once again approaching – Field Day!
Each year the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) sponsors Field Day
as an emergency preparedness exercise. The event takes place during
a 24-hour period on the fourth weekend of June. For 2012 the event
takes place during a 27-hour period between 1800 UTC on Saturday,
June 23, 2012 and 2100 UTC on Sunday June 24, 2012. Those who set up
prior to 1800 UTC on June 23 can operate only 24 hours.
The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT) promotes its own version of Field Day for operation via the amateur satellites, held concurrently with the ARRL event.
With the loss of AO-51 and SO-6ay this year is going to be
most challenging. If you are considering ONLY the FM voice satellites
like AMRAD-OSCAR-27 or SaudiSat-Oscar-50 for your primary AMSAT Field
Day focus: Don’t, unless you are simply hoping to make one contact
for the ARRL rules bonus points.
The congestion on FM LEO satellites was so intense in prior years
that we must continue to limit their use to one-QSO-per-FM-satellite.
This includes the International Space Station. You will be allowed
one QSO if the ISS is operating Voice. You will also be allowed one
digital QSO with the ISS or any other digital, non-store-and-forward,
packet satellite (if operational).
If you have worked the satellites on Field Day in recent years, you
may have noticed a lot of good contacts can be made on some of the
less-populated, low-earth-orbit satellites like VUSat OSCAR-52,Fuji-OSCAR 29 (may or may not be operational), AMSAT-OSCAR 7. During Field
Day the transponders come alive like 20 meters on a weekend. The good
news is that the transponders on these satellites will support multiple simultaneous contacts. The bad news is that you can’t use FM,
just low duty cycle modes like SSB and CW.
The AMSAT Field Day 2012 event is open to all Amateur Radio operators.
Amateurs are to use the exchange as specified in ARRL rules for Field
Day. The AMSAT competition is to encourage the use of all amateur satellites, both analog and digital.
For the complete listing of the AMSAT Field Day Rules please refer to
the documents posted on-line at:
http://www.amsatnet.com/fd2012.doc
http://www.amsatnet.com/fd2012.pdf
Links are also accessible from http://www.amsat.org front page.
Bruce Paige, KK5DO
AMSAT Director Contests and Awards
Article source: http://www.southgatearc.org/news/may2012/one_month_to_field_day.htm
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