Field Day 2014

[W1DMM]

From past experience; yes the VHF/UHF can work in the same tent as SSB, of course headphones are almost required. The IC-706MkII and FT-857 work great for this kind of op.

You only need to worry about 2 and 6 meters, I think we only got about 5 Qs total on 440 in a dozen years, mostly SSB on 144.200-144.275 and 50.125 - 50.300 -- people usually stay close to the national calling frequencies.

Activity usually runs 14:00 to about 20:30 on Saturday and about 07:30 to 14:00 on Sunday. Sunday there are a lot of casual class D & class E users, be ready to know the difference as they may not be sure. Saturday will be most of your available FD VHF/UHF stations with a mix of seek & pounce and calling CQ FD on a frequency - alternate it. There is a bit of CW, not much, you may find some early Sunday say 06:00 to 07:30. Of course, if the bands open all hell will break loose. Don't be shocked with a report of W6ZZZ 2A LAX - yes I've seen it
GL Dan W1DMM

The VHF 2 meter station can be used to send the FD message to the GOTA station for the 100 point bonus (Yup that is legal, we checked it out a few years ago).