For Field Day this year, I participated again with my club, the Waypoint Amateur Radio Club, WA0RC, for an operation in the company parking garage in Olathe, Kansas. We ran for nearly the full 24-hour period and had 12 participants over the weekend. Our final claimed score was 1,720, which was a nice improvement over last year’s score.
Our setup this year was 3A KS as a club station, but we really only planned to run two full-time stations. Those two stations used the club’s Alinco DX-SR8 and Yaesu FT-991a into a 40–10m EFHW and a 160m doublet, respectively. Both stations used a tuner with bandpass filters as well. The third station spot was meant for people who wanted to bring their own equipment to use for a period of time. We supplied a Buddistick tuned for 15m for this spot, which actually worked well, as a few club members stopped by and hooked up their equipment.
As our parking garage has some AC power availability, we were able to run the required radio equipment off a generator and the rest of the equipment from commercial power. This was very helpful, as we only needed to refuel the 2,000W generator a couple of times over the period. It also meant we were able to claim the 100% Emergency Power bonus while maintaining conveniences without concern for electricity.
In addition to the radio operation, we also held a VE test session during the afternoon and had a few non-affiliated community members come test. As a club, we have really ramped up our testing program, so it is nice to see that we can serve the KC metro as a source for no-cost license exams.
I like to set personal goals for Field Day for motivation to try something new or develop certain skills. This year, I decided not to make any SSB contacts and focus solely on CW and potentially satellite contacts. In the end, I did not work any birds, but I did hold to my CW mission and made 110 CW contacts across 15m, 20m, 40m, and 80m. I was very happy with this, as I walked away feeling comfortable with my CW skills at 20 wpm. I had started the weekend at 15 wpm but found myself wanting the contacts to go faster (a welcome sign given all the practice I’ve been doing at 20 wpm)!
Our score breakdown was as follows:
| Band | CW | Digital | Phone |
|---|---|---|---|
| 80m | 1 | — | — |
| 40m | 59 | — | 174 |
| 20m | 36 | 45 | 15 |
| 15m | 14 | 82 | 13 |
| 10m | — | 3 | 3 |
| TOTAL | 110 | 130 | 205 |
Altogether, we ended up with 445 contacts across the three modes.
The event went quite nicely this year, even though we had slightly fewer people come participate. However, those who came spent a significant amount of time there. Rather than cook out like last year, we simply did a pizza run for dinner, which worked well. While we had many ideas for tweaking things next year, I think our main takeaway is that we can eliminate the overnight portion and turn it into a long Saturday operation. Only one other club member stayed overnight with me, and it just doesn’t seem worthwhile to have to coordinate and manage that. In the future, we’ll probably try running until midnight or even a bit later, until people are generally ready to leave, and then tear down. Streamlining the amount of preparation and setup seems to give the best bang for the buck in terms of overall enjoyment.