Fox River Radio League

The 2008 Huntley Fall Festival was held on September 13th and hosted a special event station, W9H, by the Fox River Radio League. "We just want to say thanks to everyone that braved the wind and rain to show up..." said Event Chairperson, Joe AB9OU. "Even though most of the outside events were rained out and had to be moved inside negating the need for our help with communications, it seemed that everyone still had a good time setting up and tearing down antennas in the rain and trying to make contacts on 40 and 20 meters."

Event co-chair Bill W9WRS said, "Hopefully next year, the conditions will be much better." Both Joe and Bill are members of the FRRL, a 220 member amateur radio club located in the Fox Valley area of northeast Illinois. This was the 3rd Annual event and the 2nd time the FRRL has hosted a special event station. The Festival was located in Deicke Park.

Early Saturday morning the hams gathered for breakfast which was provided by the local Lions Club. A revised operating strategy was agreed upon due to the inclement weather. There are several shelters in Deicke Park and one was chosen to set up the special event station. The 40 meter station consisted of an Alinco DX-70 provided by John AG9D. He also supplied a headset boom mic, logging computer (Linux) and feedline. The 20 meter station was provided by Greg N9CHA and consisted of an Icom 756Pro and logging computer (WinXP). Greg also provided an Icom IC-2820 dual band radio for grounds communications.

The two stations were set up and on the air by 8:30. Initially, two HF antennas and a dual band VHF/UHF (Joe AB9OU) were erected. The 40 meter antenna was a simple dipole set up as an Inverted Vee. The club's mast and support system, purchased from Penninger Radio, was used as both the center point for the dipole, and the mount for the dual band antenna. Modes included CW, SSB and PSK. A very nice Begali Paddle belonging to Tom AB9IN was used to make CW contacts.

To reduce potential interference between the 20 and 40 meter stations, the club's band-pass transceiving filters were used. These filters are made by Industrial Communication Engineers, Ltd. The club owns 4 of these filters, one each for 80, 40, 20 and 15 meters. They are rated at 250 watts. No interference was detected between the two stations on any mode or combination of modes. The antennas were only separated by about 100'.

A Diamond BB7V vertical antenna (Greg N9CHA) was mounted to a 16 foot mast supported by a Penninger Radio tripod. Later in the day, a Buddipole (Greg N9CHA) was set up. The mast was a Penninger Radio push-up mast and tripod system. After operating on 20 for a short time, signals were received well, but limited contacts were made. Even after switching to the Buddipole there were a limited number of contacts being made. So a quick 20 meter dipole was put together and installed. Again, contacts were hard to make. The 756Pro was in question, so a power meter was inserted in the line to check the output power. Only 15 watts was measured. A back up radio, an IC-7000 (Greg N9CHA) replaced the suspect radio. Now the team was making contacts on PSK, Voice and CW.

At 10:45 the dual band radio was switched to the FRRL UHF repeater to listen to an ARISS contact being transmitted on the IRLP. Grounds communications were not required so after lunch many decided to return home. The HF special event stations remained on the air until 4:00.

Here is a list of participants:

Joe AB9OU, Bill W9WRS, Tom AB9IN, Eric AB9OS, Bob WB9TZC, Ken N9WCX, John AG9D, Keith N9YA, Dean KC9EOQ, Bart KC9FQA, Catherine KC9KJU, Frank AA9FR, Mark KC9AMZ, Greg N9CHA