FieldDay

I wrapped up another field day with my friend Paul (W7PEZ) in Eastern Washington. For the two days, I had 204 contacts, broken out roughly as: Yes, I worked SSB. It was kinda Frankfurt United Norway WT8P is sporting the 6-day salt and pepper look Paul worked 200 contacts, nearly all CW. Both are personal records. Neither of us were “running,” which would certainly have bumped up the totals, nor did we operate all the time, because most of the fun of Field Day is Everything Else. ...

Paul (W7PEZ) and I worked field day as 2B EWA, that is, we set up with battery-powered equipment, everything self-contained. The national forest site near Cle Elum was fantastic – great view from a ledge, higher elevation (near 4000′) so it was cooler, very quiet, and trees to mount antennas. 100w versus 12w Paul brought his ICOM 7300 (HF) and a Yaesu 857 (HF + VHF + UHF), but stuck with the ICOM. I used my Elecraft KX3. Neither of us was mentally ready to have our brand new K4s in the field just yet. ...

There were scant formalized opportunities for field day this year as local clubs either didn’t have a formal program (Redmond) or weren’t actively open (Issaquah), so I joined my friend K7IP in Ocean Shores to mess around with radios and do some geocaching. We operated from the public beach south of town. (4WD very helpful for getting there.) K7IP (Doug) setting up the kite For the first morning, we used up a Kite antenna. The kite was tethered to his truck by string, which stands out a little better. The second line is 135′ of #12 magnet wire. We were originally going to feed this to my 9:1 balun, but tightening the screws sheared the wire. We added a long counterpoise and just ran it direct to the radio. ...