When everyone pitches in, Field Day is a lot more fun

I had a blast at Field Day again this year. And, it was a heck of a lot more fun because it was a club event, and we had lots of people pitch in and help. This includes:

• Dave, N8SBE, who was the chief cat herder,
• everyone who helped set up the antennas on Friday evening,
• the folks who brought out tents and trailers.
• the folks who brought out their radios,
• Maryanne, W8VWY, who arranged for all the food,
• Dinesh, AB3DC, and Ryan, W8RSM, who wrangled the computers,
• everyone who operated the radios,
• everyone who worked on getting the bonus points, and
• the crew that did the tear down on Sunday.

Once again, we (ARROW, that is) were class 4A, with two CW stations, one phone station, one combination phone/digital station, and a GOTA station. We’re blessed with several good CW operators, so we were actually able to keep the CW stations busy for most of the 24 hours. We’re also blessed with other hams who were anxious to operate the other stations, and we managed to keep them busy, too. As you can see from the chart below, we had 24 operators total, and that’s not counting the people who operated the GOTA station.

Here’s a look at our stats:

Personally, I made the most contacts ever on Field Day—501 contacts all on CW. As you can see most of my contacts were on 40-meter CW. Part of the reason for this is that I was called on to start operating right at the start. I had expected someone else to do the honors, while I got the GOTA station going. When 2:00 pm rolled around, however, I was the only one available to work the station. Fortunately, one of my “assistant” GOTA coaches—Mike, KE8PWV—was available to take over, while I ran the CW station.

Also, fortunately, the stars—or I should say the ionosphere—were in perfect alignment for me. The band was in really good shape, and there were lots of stations to contact. I found a frequency to set up on, and ran pretty much continuously for the next several hours. I don’t know how many contacts I managed to make, but it was a boatload.

Getting with GOTA

Another highlight for me was coaching the GOTA station. I really enjoy helping new hams get some experience with HF. This year, we had a rush of GOTA operators Saturday afternoon, but that petered out kind of fast. Picking up the slack, though, was the Hoffman family: Matthew KE8UEE, his mother Suzanne KE8TYK, and Matthew’s younger sister, Anna.

Matthew was our “GOTA star” last year, racking up quite a few contacts for us. This year, Matthew, now armed with an Extra Class license, was a coach himself, helping both his mother and sister make contacts.

As I usually do, I left the site around 9:00 pm, went home, showered, and hit the sack for a bit. I got up at 3:30 am and got back around 4:00 am. That was perfect timing, as Arun, W8ARU, who had been working the midnight shift on the 80-meter CW station, was just about ready to quit. Arun complained that there were no new stations to be worked, but I managed to scratch out 74 contacts over the next two hours. Not great, but not bad, either.

As the sky turned from gray to orange, I switched back to the 40-meter CW station. I didn’t keep track of exactly how many contacts I made, but I think my rate was a bit higher than what I was doing on 80 meters. I think that was partly due to the number of 1D stations that got on the air Sunday morning. I did manage to find some Class A stations, though.

As the contacts became fewer and farther between, I started to tire of listening to the computer pound out “CQ W8RP FD,” so did some search-and-pounce. I had some success with that, and I would switch back and forth between searching and pouncing and running a frequency.

Going for 500

At some point, I decided to quit. I got up and wandered over to the information tent, where a bunch of people had congregated. The information tent featured a big display that was displaying some real-time date, including the number of contacts made by each operator. When I saw that I had 487 contacts, I said, “Nuts. I guess I have to get back on the air and hit 500.”

I actually had to make more than just 13 to hit 500, as that 487 figure included a number of dupes. I decided early on that instead of telling the other station that the contact was a dupe, that I’d just work them, and let the software sort it out. N1MM, the logging software that we were using, does give you a figure that already takes into account those dupes, so I used that number instead. I think that I needed another 20 or so. I was able to make those in another hour or so, and at that point, quit.

For the rest of the time, I just hung out. Our county clerk came by—giving us the elected official bonus—and since I knew him, I gave him a tour of our setup. I even got him to sit down and make a contact at the GOTA station!

Demographics problem?

Finally, I’m happy to say that we had a real good mix of people—not just a bunch of old guys—at this year’s Field Day. In addition to Matthew and his sister, we had at least one teenager show up and make a contact at the GOTA station. In addition, we had a number of 20-somethings show up. So, while the average age of the attendees was probably greater than that of the general population, all is not lost, at least not as far as ARROW is concerned.