This Winter Field Day (WFD) I operated with the West Georgia Amateur Radio Society. I am one of two CW ops so I got to play CW. We operated under W4F. I typically operate away from the main group so I won’t QRM them. This gives me the latitude to switch bands at will. My purpose is to get multipilers. You get a multpier from working each band. I managed 5 bands. Six meters never came up and I had no takers on 160 meters. Friday night and Saturday morning, prior to WFD, I made a few POTA contacts, had two CW QSO’s and managed to get France on 10 meters. So the antenna was working.
About the club, in general, we are not hard core contesters. We like to do these events for three reasons, we like to socialize, eat, and play on the radio, often in that order. Saturday, John WD8LQT made chili. Along with the chili, we had hotdogs, coleslaw, and various condimets and snacks. My wife Mary K4SEZ, made Graham Cracker Cookies, a club favorite.
I went QRV at 1400 hrs. eastern on saturday. CW during WFD can be a challenge. There are some really good ops that can zip along at 25-30 wpm. I am not one of them. I can usually get the exchnge if I listen to them call a few times. I can send between 16-22 wpm. Sometimes I felt like I was standing still at 22 wpm with these ops at high speed. A lot of times CW ops are operating portable and QRP or low power. I made many contacts with the S-meter not budging off of zero. We also had a lot of QSB and some QRN. You could see the QSB come and go on the waterfall. It was a bit of a challenge, but I felt WFD helped me realize how my CW Innovations class has already helped me. I was able to copy the QRQ stations better than I have in the past. I eneded up making 45+ contacts mainly by search and pounce. I didn’t think I would do well running a frequency — yet. I went QRT about 2200 hrs. eastern Saturday night. I had to leave early Sunday morning so my wife could get to church on time.
Equipment: My antenna was my Chameleon EmComm II ver.1. I ran a 60′ wire in an inverted L withe a 20′ vertical section using my push-up pole and tying off the other end to a pine tree. I had a 50′ counterpoise underneath the antenna. The antenna played well. I have no complaints, it did what it was supposed to do. I think it will be my WFD/FD antenna if I have the space to set it up. The radio was 2nd Peter, my IC-7300. I was running between 35-50 watts. The radio purred along and never missed a beat. I love my 7300’s. I always say that if I could only have one radio, the IC-7300 would be it. For paddles, I used my Begali Expedition. It’s a nice heavy paddle that doesn’t move and is silky smooth. Logging was handled by ACLog WFD edition on my Lenovo Thinkpad.
Everything worked as advertised, so no real changes need to be made to the radios and related gear. We did talk about getting a MESH network between me and the base camp so we can network my computer with theirs. All in all, it was a good time. I got to see folks I don’t see very often, ate good food and ran some CW on the radio. The QSO map is my contacts only. The club is still operating as I write this. 73 – de Scott
KK4Z 