Tips for having an enjoyable Field Day weekend!

. Technicians have full privileges on the VHF and UHF bands. Try SSB phone and RTTY/data/CW on 10 meters, and CW on 80, 40, and 15 meters. Find printable frequency charts here. Scratching your head about the 2020 Field Day temporary rule waivers? We’ve prepared this FAQ to help you. After Field Day, submit an entry with your results using the web app or mail to ARRL, submitted or postmarked by Tue, Jul 28, 2020. .

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Greetings to all,

 

Just coming off a high from Field Day 2020 running Class 1E Qrp, on a 12AH/12v battery and solar power in my backyard/patio:  Elecraft Kx3 running 5w into a portable 40/20 fan dipole on a 31’ pushup pole.  All contacts were via Search and Pounce, I will admit to doing a pick and choose method on selecting contacts, mostly targeting picks on FD 2020 count of Sections, States, and DX. Think I worked about 9 or 10 hours, give or take, Saturday late afternoon and evening  and last two hours Sunday afternoon.  I’ll also admit to spending a little more time to get a target rather than shooting for quantity; doing that was fun, exciting, and satisfying (and frustrating) at the time but also more frustrating at the end. My grandfathers would call that robbing Peter to pay Paul, you make your picks and suffer the consequences.  Hmm, wonder why I didn’t score higher?  Get over it!!!  LOL.

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While I’m somewhat disappointed in my total results, I did hit all four lower 48 USA corners except for Maine but did tag New Hampshire for that corner.  Ticked 52 Sections, 38 States.  I also worked Hawaii, British Columbia, Virgin Islands, and Barbados for distance targets.  Probably could have gotten Bert, F6HKA, France, but that’s like catching fish in a barrel, Bert is one of those with BIG EARS who can hear anyone almost anytime worldwide regardless of power coming his way.

 

Overall  87 total contacts.

 

One pleasant surprise was 20m, I’ve been checking on 20m CW for a couple of weeks from mid-late afternoon for a current gauge of activity.  It’s been very slow with what I hear being very weak, not much coming my way.  When I started Saturday about 4 PM on it seemed to be the norm as I had observed, but from about 6 or 6:30 PM it come alive with a second and third breath and stayed very active and coming in nicely that way until about 10 PM or so when I changed over to 40m.  Confirms the belief that even though propagation is in its low cycle, but can and does support great signals when we ‘push to talk’ regardless of our mode.

 

If we ALL clicked our mic, tapped our key, or activated our digital, we ALL might be pleased with the results! Don’t just wheel your knob and listen but put your noise of choice on the air, give it a chance, don’t give up.  Propagation is waiting to push your signal somewhere, find out.   Git-r-done!

 

How was your FD?  Hope you had as much fun as I did.  ?  If you didn’t do FD, you really missed out on another real blast – start making your plans today for FD 2021, it’s never never too early.

 

Qrp CW Rocks! 5w and a wire!

 

72, 73,

 

Cray / K5MUG