2024 FIELD DAY
This years Field Day didn’t disappoint…unless you’re talking about the weather. On Saturday around dinner time we probably had over an inch of rain in less than an hour! Total time of rainfall for the event was probably in the vicinity of about three hours. What a mess!
That being said I was impressed with the number of contacts made. 26 people signed up versus 40 from the previous year and we were still able to make 1451 contacts, not including the GOTA station. That was below the 2023 totals which was 1647 contacts. I’m thinking we lost the 196 QSO’s due to the rain delay.
CW was the mode of choice with 925 of the 1451 contacts. FT-8/ FT-4 took second with 357 contacts and phone pulled up the rear with 169 QSO’s. The hot band was 40 meters with 558 contacts. 20 meters was a close second with 530 QSO’s and after that it was 15, 80, 6 and 10 respectively.
Total points were down only 46 points from the 2023 total. I think this was due to the effort we placed on bonus points. In particular the WinLink totals which gave us an extra 300 points that we didn’t have from the previous year. Thanks to everyone that made WinLink possible!
All the equipment seemed to survive despite the downpours. The tri-bander had some issues but that may have been due to setup error as I may have not tightened up all the connections. The club may have to invest in a newer antenna in the future.
This year I was placing a little more emphasis on networking all the stations so that we could see our score in real time. It was fun watching the totals on the Contest Scoreboard as well as each operators totals.
I want to thank everyone from the members who helped with the setup to the members who brought and made food. Despite the weather I think it was a great turnout! Nothing could have been achieved if it wasn’t for the clubs teamwork.
All in all I hope everyone had as much fun as I did!
Mark – KW1X
Field Day Committee Chair
Courtesy of “The Messenger” November 2024