Winona ARC had our usual Field Day plans in place. Get the Sherriff’s communications trailer and big generator up to Wincrest Park, put up the club tribander and a couple of dipoles, set up for all three modes, and do a full 24-hour operation in class 3A. We have done it plenty of times, we know we can do it. No problem.
Then we got the weather report.
On Friday morning, Dan WK0W received a call from the National Weather Service announcing a webinar on Friday afternoon to discuss the storms expected to hit the area over the weekend. NWS doesn’t bother folks with a big on-line meeting unless they think things will be pretty serious. Some text messages started passing among the folks involved, and soon we had AC9TO, W0IH, W0VTT, and WK0W in a group chat. Dan and Marv were supposed to pick up the Sherriff’s trailer that morning and tow it up to the park with Marv’s pickup. County Road 21, the route required to get the trailer to the part, has been under construction and is largely unpaved. With all the recent rain, and the amount of additional rain expected over the weekend, Marv was worried about getting his pickup stuck in the mud. W0IH was concerned about getting the tribander up to the park with his little trailer. We talked about cancelling completely, but W0VTT suggested just doing a smaller setup on Sunday morning, after the storms had passed. After a little discussion, we decided on one screen tent, a few dipoles in the trees and running class 2A.
Club president AD0UT has yet to discover cell phones, so he was contacted (presumably by carrier pigeon, but that cannot be confirmed) and asked to announce our new plans on the club email reflector. We felt good about our revised plans; we could still go out and operate Field Day, have some fun, and not get soaking wet or worry about being struck by lightning.
AD0UT was the first to arrive around 5:30 on Sunday morning. Lance brought the club Field Day supplies from N0QK’s garage and started sorting through them. W0VTT showed up around 6:15 with one complete station, table & chairs, and a small generator. WK0W arrived soon after and we began putting up the first antenna. W0VTT’s fancy-pants sling shot/fishing reel antenna installer wasn’t cooperating that morning, so we settled for installing his 40m dipole inverted vee fashion on a 10m collapsible fiberglass mast. Keith KE0IJI was next bringing the most important items for the event; our food and drinks! Keith put out quite a spread for us, with enough food that we were sharing it with our visitors during the day.
Photo by Mike W0VTT
It took a little longer than expected to get everything set up (Of course, we should have expected it to take longer than expected…) but we were finally ready around 8:00. We had two radios ready to go, but only one antenna at this point. We started the generator and W0VTT made the first contact on 40m CW at 1308z. W0NE was on the air.
John K2OPT and Marv AC9TO arrived after their morning church services and fortunately, John had a ZS6BKW type dipole with him. Lance took over operating on 40m SSB while the rest of us installed John’s antenna. We now had two stations going; one on phone and one on CW. Operations continued until around 1:00 PM when the bands got very quiet. As usual, 99% of the stations started promptly at 1800z on Saturday, so they were finished. After a few too many unanswered CQs, we decided to try setting up for the digi modes and eventually Dan and Lance made a handful of FT8 QSOs.
We had planned to operate until the very end of the Field Day period at 2100z (4:00 pm local) but QSOs were so few and far between that we decided to pull the plug around 2:45 with a total of 236 QSOs in the log. Packing up was quick and easy, and we were all home in time for dinner.
Looking back, the weather really wasn’t all that bad, and we probably could have set up on Saturday and operated most of the time. But the information we had on Friday made it look pretty grim, and we decided that in this case, discretion was the better part of valor. We still had plenty of fun, enjoyed good band conditions, and great fellowship.
Operator/Setup: AC9TO, AD0UT, K2OPT, KE0IJI, W0VTT, WK0W
Visitors: K0ZYV & family, W0EUU, 4 basketball players
Summary
Entry received at: 2024-06-25 15:46:00 UTC
Submitted by: Michael G Cizek, W0VTT E-mail: w0vtt@arrl.net
Call Used: W0NE GOTA Station Call: (NONE) ARRL/RAC Section: MN Class: 2A
Participants: 6 Club/Group Name: *WINONA AMATEUR RADIO CLUB
Power Source(s): Generator
Power Multiplier: 2X
Preliminary Total Score: 1,224
Bonus Points
| Bonus | Points |
|---|---|
| 100% Emergency Power | 200 |
| Public Location | 100 |
| Entry Submitted via Web | 50 |
| Total Bonus Points | 350 |
Score Summary - Cabrillo log/dupe sheet file:
W0NE-24FD.log
| CW | Digital | Phone | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total QSOs | 196 | 5 | 35 | |
| Total Points | 392 | 10 | 35 | 437 |
Claimed Score = (QSO points x power mult) = 874
| Band | CW QSOs | CW Pwr(W) | Digital QSOs | Digital Pwr(W) | Phone QSOs | Phone wr(W) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 160m | ||||||
| 80m | ||||||
| 40m | 104 | 100 | 19 | 100 | ||
| 20m | 49 | 100 | 6 | 100 | ||
| 15m | 43 | 100 | 5 | 50 | 6 | 100 |
| 10m | 9 | 100 | ||||
| 2m | 1 | 5 | ||||
| 222 | ||||||
| 432 | ||||||
| Satellite | ||||||
| Other | ||||||
| GOTA | ||||||
| Total | 196 | 5 | 35 |
Provided by Mike W0VTT