2022.06.25 Summer Field Day Hickory Hills
2022.06.25 Summer Field Day Hickory Hills:
Our 2022 (summer) Field Day was held at Hickory Hills Park (about 15 miles South of Waterloo), at the
Archer shelter. Member attendance was good, but we didn't have very many guests this year.
We ran 4A, setting up three satellite stations under canopies at varying distances from the main shelter, to
see if this might reduce interference and also to try to run multiple modes on a single band by separating
the antennas.
Heavy rain fell all morning prior to our arrival, but gave us a break for setup. Skies were heavily overcast
until late afternoon, with a few light showers throughout the event. We did receive an hour or so of sun
later in the day, although the overcast returned and eventually rushed our tear-down with another shower.
Our canopies worked well to keep the satellite stations dry.
There was a GOTA station, but it got very little use. One guest reported having difficulty locating our
shelter once their GPS directed them to the park entrance, suggesting we need to improve our event signage.
Our sign-in sheet recorded a total of 21 in attendance.
Solar power was able to keep the batteries up despite the cloud cover. Two of the stations were too far from
the shelter to hook into the main grid, though they were able to run fine on battery power.
