Winter Field Day heats up!

A handful of Rusk County hams made a good showing for Winter Field Day 2020 over the past weekend. Keith, KN5G, offered his "deer camp" to host the station and even with a few sprinkles at the very end, it was a perfect location.

The station consisted of David's, W5CWT, go-box with a FT-991 and Keith's LiFePO4 30Ah battery. The battery kept the station on for nearly 10 hours without a hitch. Group erected an end-feed long wire antenna, an inverted-V and a multi-band BuddiePole. All three antenna's performed well across the bands.

The group also enjoyed hot dogs grilled on the campfire (thanks Stephen for the chili!) and some coffee to stay warm.

Learn more about Powerpoles!

David, W5CWT, presented a presentation on Powerpoles at the January club meeting. Powerpoles are the standard for ARES and RACES groups across the country and have become the typical power connector for most amateurs.

Powerpoles are easy to install and provide a simple and safe way to connect your gear to someone else's power supply. There are even several powersupplies and radios that come already equipped with powerpoles.

The club will hold a "Build Night" next month (February 2020) during the club meeting to construct a Power Distribution Unit using powerpoles. The unit will accept a single input and have three output connectors to run a radio, a tuner and something else. Cost to build the project is $15. Let us know if you want to participate by registering here.

The presentation is available here (thanks to the unknown ham who originally created it!)

New Section affects Sweepstakes

A new section has been announced by the Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC). The RAC is Canada's equivalent of the ARRL in the states. The change will bring the total number of "Sections" used as multipliers in many ham radio contests to 84. That will also be the number of Sections needed for a clean sweep in the ARRL November Sweepstakes (SS) this year.

The new section resulted from the addition of Prince Edward Island (PE) and will become effective on April 1 2020 (not a joke!). RAC said its Prince Edward Island members have been working for some time to create a separate Section for RAC ARES activities there. The provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick will continue to be in the Maritimes (MAR) Section.

To see a map of all the ARRL/RAC sections, as well as a ton of other good information, visit EI8IC's very complete website.