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| Field Day Northern Michigan Style |
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Welcome to our first Field Day from the site of the Icebreaker Mackinaw Maritime Museum Ship.
The picture above says it all. This is one difficult place to run a field day operation--or at least
to keep focused on operating. This view is from the Starboard side of the Mackinaw looking across
the CCECPSCO communications trailer toward Mackinaw Island. The trailer served as our GOTA station.
The multi-band trap vertical to the right of the trailer is mounted on an I-Beam sunk into the pier
that was used to tie up ships. My guess is that it's in there pretty deep. In any case it provided
a great counterpoise for the HF antenna.
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| No View is Too Good for our GOTA Generator |
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We treat our generators right! Here's our trailer's generator located near the end of the pier and that's powering our GOTA station. Not only
does it have a great view of the Icebreaker Mackinaw (behind the camera), but a super view of the shoreline
East of Mackinaw City. Beyond view in the distance is the city of Cheboygan, which was the home port of the
Icebreaker Mackinaw before it was retired. The generator, sitting about 100' from the trailer, ran perfect
all weekend. No doubt it was quite pleased with its surroundings.
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| And the Food was Great! |
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Needless to say, no Field Day event is complete without food. Here Bill, Shannon, and Tom are preparing some of our morning
vittles consisting of eggs and bacon. Hamburgers and hot dogs (real Field Day Food), were also on the menu for other meals. Notice
also the new racks and antennas on top of the trailer. Eventually those racks will provide support for a tower during transport. For now they support
an array of antennas for the spectrum of radios installed in the trailer including two VHF/UHF Ham rigs, three public safety radios
programmed up for the three counties we serve, a modified low-band Maxtrac for Six Meter service, another commercial radio filled with
GMRS, FRS, and other miscellaneous frequencies, a CB radio, and eventually a VHF Marine radio. Additionally the trailer often sports an
HF rig, a WiFi router with a slot for a Cell Phone data card (used that weekend), optionally a UHF repeater, various handhelds,
and base-band chatter direct from our members.
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| Another Perspective |
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Just so you believe we were there, here's the HF antenna, some of our cars, the trailer, and the ship. No, this isn't a "blue screen"
overlay of a stock picture, it's actual blue sky, which didn't happen till Sunday. This is also a better view of the I-Beam where the GOTA antenna
was mounted. The I-Beams have a horizontal bar set in them which helped to hold the hawsers (nautical for a large heavy rope) used to secure
ships at the pier. Each corner of the I-Beam also has a round piece welded to it to prevent wear or damage to the hawsers. You can also see the
trailer's power cable running off to the generator, which was a ways to the left of this picture. The view is to the South-East toward the part of
town where Bell's Fishery is located. If you haven't had real Michigan smoked whitefish, this (and John Cross in Charlevoix) is the place to get
some.
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| Yes, That Prop is BIG |
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Like we say about antennas, when it comes to props, you can't have one that's too big--that is unless your boat can't stay afloat with it.
In this case, the 5,252 ton Mackinaw had no problem both supporting and turning these 14 foot propellers at the stern and a smaller 12 foot
propeller at the bow. Somewhat more subtle in this picture is the 160 through 40 Meter Alpha Delta dipole above the ship's Port side. If you look
just above the "I" in Mackinaw, you can see the 10 foot support holding the aft end of the dipole. If you're not Broadband challenged (like
many of us in Northern Michigan), you can click on the High Res link and should be able to follow the support rope part of the way up to
the antenna, which isn't too visible in this picture.
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| Can You See the UHF Repeater Antenna? |
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While we're not exactly sure which antenna our VHF repeater is tied to (it's one of the VHF marine antennas up there somewhere) we're sure the
vertical on the railing to the right of the upper RADAR is connected to our UHF repeater. That was actually one of our projects Saturday
morning Field Day weekend. Thanks to a friend from the Coast Guard, who is permitted to climb the mast (they only let us walk the plank), we
were able to move the repeater's antenna from a short mast just above the radio room to this higher location. Those two RADAR antennas, by the way,
are no longer functional since much of the electronics was removed when the ship was retired. The RDF antenna at the top, however, still works, which
is kind of surprising considering it's one of the more likely things on the ship to take a lightning strike.
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| W8AGB 145.110 and 444.375 Repeaters |
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Don't ask me why a picture of the two Ham repeaters on board the Mackinaw are included on a page about Field Day. I suppose a good excuse is that we moved
the UHF antenna to the higher location that weekend and we wanted to show you where the other end of the cable goes. Unfortunately, you can't see that, because
the UHF duplexer, which is sitting on top of the repeaters, is hidden inside the rack. In fact, we couldn't see it either because the rack is too close to the
wall and the VHF duplexer (also not visible) is sitting on the floor next to the rack making it even more difficult to get back there. We assume the cable
ended up in the right connection because the repeater seems to work. Perhaps someday we'll know for sure. In any case, we don't have another picture of the
repeaters in our Web site--so here they are. The repeaters, Motorola Desktrac's, were cheap on E-Bay but have to be the worst repeaters I've every worked with
(almost). These things are marginally stable in frequency but do manage to stay close enough to be usable and the COR output was a real pain to work with.
The blank panel below the repeaters is the RLC-2 controller and the unit above is one of the many UPS's left on this ship. This one is providing some amount
of backup power in case the mains power to the ship gets interrupted. By the way, this is in the "Crypto" room and is where the ship's HF radios were located.
The rack with the repeaters was the rack that held all of the data and crypto equipment. Needless to say, that equipment was not left by the Coast Guard.
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| The Only (now) Working RADAR On Board |
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Here's the only currently working RADAR on board the Mackinaw. It's located in the Pilothouse and was another Saturday project that weekend. This unit started
blowing fuses last fall and was pulled for some work. Saturday, we reinstalled it, spun the antenna a few times to make sure it would do that, and powered it
back up. Gratefully, it came back to life. Helping out with some of the other communications, navigation, and electrical equipment is just another way the
CCECPSO has been helping the Museum organization. What you're seeing on the RADAR display is Mackinaw City in the center, the shoreline to the South East of
the city toward the lower-left, and the Mackinac Bridge (the long straight line) to the right. If you look at the lower-left of the RADAR display you can see
it's only set for a three mile radius, which is why you can't see the other end of the bridge and the UP at the right. If you're wondering why the ship and
city are spelled with a "w" at the end and the bridge with a "c" at the end, it's because the area was populated by both English and French and they both had their
way of spelling the name derived from "mish-inni-maki-nong".
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| Yet Another Antenna |
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One of the antennas used for Field Day was this HF vertical. Sitting at its base is a Sunair automatic antenna coupler used to match the antenna to whatever
frequency on which the attached RT-9000 radio may be set. This is one of the antennas that was on the ship at the time of the ship's retirement. The Coast Guard
cut both the transmission line and control cable to this coupler, as well as the lines to the matching antenna and coupler on the port side. This would be
the Starboard antenna and coupler. You can tell because the ship is docked heading West toward the center of Mackinaw City, the Mackinac Bridge is North
of Mackinaw City, and the bridge is visible in this picture (make sense?). The break wall in the picture is the one protecting the East side of the current
public marina. You may now ask why we were using a permanently installed antenna for Field Day. The reason is that we were running class "F" as an EOC.
The ship, which has been used in emergency exercises, is classified as an established EOC (well, arguably since it was sort of, kind of, designated
that during the exercise). Not to worry, we hardly represent competition to any other Field Day stations since we spent so much time working on things,
eating, sleeping, and of course taking pictures--not to mention the continuing noise problems from things on the ship (which is still something to work on).
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| The View to Port |
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Looking off to the Port (get the pun?) we get a view of the new Mackinaw City marina nearing completion. This is going to make a beautiful addition to the
Mackinaw City skyline and will accommodate considerably more boats than the current marina. This picture doesn't show the entire expanse of the new marina
because I wasn't using my wide-angle lense. Believe me though, it's pretty big and represents yet another reason why busting our back ends to rack up a
massive contest score was not the most important thing on our minds.
As for actual Field Day operations, we had three stations up and running--two on the ship and the GOTA station in the trailer. I haven't compiled the final
results yet, but it appears we made somewhere North of 400 contacts. It wasn't high-pressure contesting, but it was a fine weekend nonetheless. Not only did
we setup and establish communications, have some good food, and do a bunch of talking, but we also got a few things done on the ship to help our hosts.
Speaking of which, we all want to thank the Icebreaker Mackinaw Maritime Museum Ship organization for letting us spend the weekend on, in, and around this
wonder of 1940's engineering. Truly, a Northern Michigan way to do Field Day!
Chuck - N8DNX
(p.s. If some of you guys have other pictures, particularly of us actually operating, send them to me and I'll get them posted here.)
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