When you compare Winter Field Day 2021 to 2020, things looked a bit different:
WFD 2020
WFD 2021
While it wasn’t the same, we still had fun! There was a small group chatting on the UPARC Slack channel while working contacts. I’m sure we were all trying to cut thru the soup of pileups to get that Section we needed.
In the final minutes of WFD, I happened across our distant brother, Glen N4ESU. Great to hear his voice albeit brief.
Overall I had a good time. Think about sending a brief summary of your experience with one or two photos to webmaster@nulluparc.org. We can merge them together for a nice story of how we worked the event!
BTW, Tom Schaefer NY4I will be hosting a session on calculating your WFD score and submitting your logs.
Time: Feb 20, 2021 10:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7274372771?pwd=SWlON1MzODFSMFRzaG53eGZUbTcyUT09
73,
Jack, N4KIN
Participant Stories
Glen Panazzolo, N4ESU
So…had a blast doing WFD this year!
Worked from inside the mobile with an EFHW w/ 49:1 balun (plug for alan’s baluns) cut for 40m with a 27′ fiberglass pole mounted to the hitch. Ran the antenna in an inverted “L” with the balun on the fiberglass pole, a ground rod, the wire running up the pole and out to a tent spike.
Refined the set-up so I can get the antenna set up in under 10 minutes, pretty much self contained on the truck with the exception of the ground rod and a tent stake for the end of the wire.
FT-891 mobile radio, logging with TR4W on a laptop mount in the vehicle.
Finished with 350 SSB contacts, 280 on 40m, 64 on 20m and 6 on 10m.
Worked 2 DX stations, 46 sections, a few WCF contacts including Jack N4KIN who was #346 with 7 minutes left in the event (sorry for the bum’s rush Jack, I was really pushing to get to 350 so didn’t get to chat!)
Total 1050 points via TR4W. Beat out my ARRL FD qso count by about 75 so was very happy.
Although it was not an official club event, we had about 6 members from my local Brooklyn club who came out on Saturday, 3 of them operating individually from their mobiles to maintain social distancing.
On Sunday the temperatures never broke 30 degrees. We are experiencing blizzard conditions today in NY, so the weather generally cooperated for the event, all things considered!
Thanks to all who have mentored me along the way in this amateur radio hobby. I’ve learned a lot, especially from the joint Field Day events the three clubs have done in recent years.
Look forward to things getting back to normal soon!
Alan Streitman, W4UB
Great job! I puttered around for a couple of hours on Sat & Sun, band conditions were not great. Only worked 30 contacts and gave up.
Jason Esterline, N4BOZ
Great job Glenn, that’s a lot of QSO’s from that type of setup. Nicely done.
I worked about 3 hours total and finished with around 80 SSB contacts, I don’t remember exactly and on a different computer at the moment. Did some 20, 40, 80, and 2m contacts…. but most was 40m.
Didn’t set any records but had a couple good runs. Wish I had more time to work it, it was fun.
Tom Schaefer, NY4I
As with Summer Field Day, this was a field day at home. After the usual messing up of the time conversion (I always forget that it is UTC start that changes for Winter Field Day as the local start time of 2:00 PM is the same in winter and summer). Thanks to Jason N4BOZ for keeping me straight on that.
As I started the contest, it became clear I had some strange radio issues. The K3 did not want to cooperate. After several debugging steps and with the clock clicking away, I opted to take the Icom 7300 off the shelf and use that. Fortunately, I have a cord for my RadioSport headset for Icom radios too. The bands were not very good and it was tough going. Having Slack available to chat with others in the area was fun. I was active on 40m CW, phone and PSK31 as well as 20m phone, CW and PSK31. I also picked up 2 contacts on 2m FM and one on 440 FM for the extra multipliers.
| Band | Mode | QSOs | Points | Multipliers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 40 | CW | 14 | 28 | 1 |
| 40 | Digital | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| 40 | Phone | 9 | 9 | 1 |
| 20 | CW | 23 | 46 | 1 |
| 20 | Digital | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| 20 | Phone | 13 | 13 | 1 |
| 2 | Phone | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| 440 | Phone | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Totals | 64 | 103 | 8 |
Final Score = 1648 points.