Field Day is Coming

The York Region Amateur Radio Club board has decided to cancel our Field Day operations again this year out of caution with the pandemic and compliance with Ontario guidelines. We are optimistic that we will be able to hold the event in 2022. 

 Meanwhile, club members are encouraged to operate a Field Day station either from home or an outdoor location, either on AC power, battery or generator, on HF or VHF, on CW, Phone or Digital, and to submit their score to the ARRL, specifying "York Region Amateur Radio Club" as their home club. As well as recognizing the individual scores, the ARRL will also recognize the overall club score when they publish the results in QST magazine. RAC will also publish the results for the Canadian stations in TCA ("The Canadian Amateur") magazine. I'd love to see a good turnout of members. 

The ISS will be operating a repeater on Field Day which you can use to make 1 (and only 1) contact for credit for the event. The limit of 1 contact is because the ISS is overwhelmed by Field Day activity so the limit will give more stations a chance at making a successful contact. The repeater, part of the ARISS project, operates on FM and contact can be made with a dual-band mobile radio and vertical antenna. A fairly clear view of the horizon is advisable as a vertical antenna does not radiate much straight up so contact is most likely when the ISS is at lower elevation angles. 

Here's the announcement from the ARRL 

International Space Station to be in Cross-Band Repeater Mode for Field Day

The Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) cross-band repeater will be available for ARRL Field Day, June 26 - 27. 

Contacts will count toward Field Day bonus points as satellite contacts and Field Day contacts. Field Day rules limit stations to one contact on any single-channel FM satellite. Note that contacts made during Field Day by ISS crew would only count for contact credit, but not for satellite bonus points. 

ISS cross-band repeater contacts are also valid AMSAT Field Day satellite contacts. The ARISS cross-band repeater uplink is 145.990 MHz (67 Hz tone), with a downlink of 437.800 MHz. ARISS suggests that those unfamiliar with the ISS repeater may want to practice with it prior to Field Day. 

ARISS had planned to switch modes to the Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS) during the second week of June, but this won't happen until after the first ARISS school contact following ARRL Field Day. The ARISS ham station will be off-air during spacewalks on June 16 and June 20.

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