Category: Contests

Well, Winter Field Day 2019 has officially come to a close. We survived, but we also came to a conclusion, and made a decision. As long as we are in North Dakota, we will never again participate in WFD as an outdoor station. We had the experience. And once is all we needed.

We got up to the island (our WFD location) at about 10AM on Saturday morning. Taking care of first things, first, we fired up the generator and the portable heater. If those two things didn’t work for, for some reason, the whole event would have been called off, for us. They fired right up, though.

The next step was to get the antennas up in the air. Using a fishing pole and a 1 oz. weight, I got it over a 40′ tree on the second shot. Pulled the fishing line, pulled the Handy Hundred, then pulled up the end-fed antenna and tied it off. Stretched out the antenna, toward the van and mounted the end about a foot or two off the ground.

We tried to get the “corkscrew” that I use to hold down the Big-Ear antenna tripod into the ground, with no luck. The frozen ground wouldn’t allow it. We ended up using a bungee cord to “attach” the tripod and mast to a 4×4 that a sign was mounted on. It worked pretty well, since nothing ended up hitting the ground.

After running all the coax and extension cord, I tested out the antennas with the analyser. I had the Big-Ear set for 20m, and it tested at 1.15:1 SWR. The end-fed tested below 2:1 on all of the bands that we’d be using, except 75m. If I remember correctly, it was at 4.3:1 at around 3.800. It was better toward the bottom of the 80m band, at 3.600, but that wasn’t where I’d be using it. I decided to try to fix that problem “later”.

Once everything was connected and running, we had about 12 minutes to spare, before the event was set to begin. I was a little surprised that it took us that long, but between and in the middle of the steps involved in the setup, we took quite a few breaks, so we could warm up.

We started making contacts, almost right away. Ran a couple pileups (the first of them was my first experience at running a pileup, which lasted about an hour). We operated on 20m, 40m, and 75m. On 75m, we were very limited, and just barely got the contacts that we needed, to count for the multiplier for the extra band. We also had a lot of (generator?) noise on 75m, but managed to get IL, TN, and WI.

In the end, we wound up with 208 SSB contacts. We didn’t work any digital or CW. At 3:43AM, I got a notification that a Blizzard Warning had been issued. It was expected to move into the area at about 9AM. I decided, at that point, that we wouldn’t be staying until 1 in the afternoon, and we would start tearing things down at dawn. We actually started tearing down at about 8:45AM, and the wind and snow was already there. Luckily, the tear-down went a lot faster than the setup, and we were off the island by 9:30AM.

Things that I’ve learned by doing Winter Field Day, this year.

1. Never put yourself into an uncomfortable situation, if you don’t absolutely have to.
2. Conversion vans are definitely not as insulated as they might seem.
3. Heat rises (I actually knew this). Don’t sit on the floor.
4. 9-10 hours is the amount of time it takes for the generator to go through a full tank of gas (it ran out at about 4AM)
5. Whenever I get a chance to work a pileup, do it! I need the practice.
6. “Foot Warmers” would have definitely helped.
7. No amount of “pre-sleeping” can prevent you from getting tired.
8. Get pictures. Sadly, this year, I did not get any pictures or video. It was the last thing on my mind, actually.

I want to send out a great big thank you to Jason Linz (ND0JL) for checking in on me via 146.52, every few hours, while he was awake. I really appreciate it!

There was one other thing that did happen, while we were up there. A county sheriff stopped up to see what we were up to. He told us that somebody had reported that it looked like somebody was living on the island. This happened just a few hours into the contest. We explained to him what we were doing, and that we had permission to be there, and everything was alright.

About 8 days from the time that I’m writing this, Winter Field Day will begin. I’ve been watching the Facebook page that’s been set up for WFD, and making sure that I am ready to go get things set up on the morning on January 26th. Some others in the Facebook group have explained how they already have antennas set up on their fish houses, etc.

I am of the thought that this should be an exercise in actual preparedness, and how quickly I can respond, if needed. To put my “getting ready” process into perspective, I’ll explain it, a little bit.

• The area where I’ll be setting up has been picked out. I have no “Plan B”, so if my first location won’t work out, I’ll need to come up with something else, quickly.
• Nothing has been set up or installed, but most things are ready in the “go bag”.
• I have a checklist of all the items that I’ll need, which will be completed about 3 hours before WFD starts.
• The radio that I’ll be using is still connected at my home QTH.
• Other needed items, such as tools, antennas, wire, heater, generator, fuel, flashlights, etc. are inside my hamshack (where they normally are), and will be loaded into the vehicle at the last minute.

In other words, when WFD comes, I will be grabbing everything that I need and double checking my checklist. The plan is to go from my normal operation at my home to operating in the field in under 2 hours (hopefully less). This is how I would normally do any portable operation, and is a major factor in the Winter Field Day operation. The statement on the front page of their website explains the importance of preparedness.

For Winter Field Day, I will be uploading my logs, live, to Contest Online ScoreBoard. I have a link to the WFD contest on the front page of my site. This is so you can follow along, if you’d like, and see where I’m at on the leaderboard.

I am also testing out what I’m calling a “Live Log”, which is linked in the right-hand column of the home page. That Live Log will NOT be updated during WFD, since I’ll be linked to the Contest Online ScoreBoard. It’s not that I “can’t” do it… I just don’t see the need to use any more bandwidth than I have to, while tethering during the event.

In the same respect to limiting bandwidth, I will also not be running any spotter network, either. Since I mostly plan on calling CQ, and not answering, I don’t see a real advantage in running it.

My QRZ page has been updated with the information about the fact that I will be participating in WFD, and all of the other information that I thought may be important. Since most people that I will talk to likely refer to my QRZ page, first, I thought that was important to put, there.