Carl, John, and I really, REALLY enjoy Field Day. It’s a great opportunity to showcase ham radio and to pull out “all the toys.” It’s a highly-anticipated weekend with hopes of good propagation and confidence in a memorable menu. Contest-wise, it’s as serious as you want it to be. I categorize the three of us as low-key competitive. We don’t expect to win our category, we don’t get bent out of shape when things go wrong, but we are earnest in making the most out of our station, our circumstances, and ourselves as operators.
Field Day 2025 at Morrow Mountain State Park in North Carolina. Photo courtesy
John K4EB, 35mm. L-R: John K4EB, Carl W8WZ, Brantley K4CBW
The year began with the three of us brainstorming a way to participate in another Field Day, together. In the (three, four?) Field Days prior, we participated in a larger multi-station Field Day that competed in the 6A, 7A, and 8A categories. During these years, John was a 40m phone band captain and Carl or I were the 20m/80m CW band captain. We colocated our phone and CW stations under one popup canopy for 24 hours of fun. In 2024, we participated in a Field Day operation that placed #7 in the country. The 40m phone and 20m/80m CW stations contributed 1700+ (933 + ?) QSOs. When we saw that it would not be possible for us to operate again in this manner, we decided to strike out on our own. We wanted to build on those numbers and make memories together, even if competing in a smaller category. We determined that starting a new club was the best option (instead of using one of our personal callsigns) and would offer more future opportunities to contest together.
After a successful Winter Field Day operation at Morrow Mountain State Park, we decided to return for Field Day proper.
Preparations
Preparations were made in the months leading up to Field Day. John spearheaded the building of a baffle for the Honda generator. Hondas are usually quiet, but this baffle added a little more sound dampening and would shield the generator from any potential rain. This generator has a very good carbon monoxide sensor as we found out when it stopped due to insufficient exhaust porting. We cut a larger whole in our foam baffle, positioned the exhaust port closer to the exhaust hole, and had smooth operating the rest of the weekend.
Closer to the date, we had a Zoom call where we finalized equipment assignments, and most importantly, the menu. Carl graciously offered to handle most of the meals and received no objection from John or myself. Not every Field Day operation has a sommelier from New Orleans on staff.
The Station
Carl and I brought our FTDX10 radios. These radios are equipped with roofing filters and are very tolerant of nearby RF energy. We used them together at prior Field Days and were very comfortable with them at Morrow Mountain State Park. We set them up as a CW station and a phone station. Carl and I would take turns at CW, John would operate phone, and Carl or I could fill in at the phone station when when John needed to step away. Operator verasatitliy is nice, especially when time is needed for meals or rest.
On the Friday before Field Day, Setup Day, we hung our antennas. We put Carl’s MyAntennas endfed half wave antenna between two trees in a picture-perfect configuration. The antenna hung completely in free space, had a perfect 90° angle, and had perfect (to our eye) proportions of horizontal and vertical polarization.
Off the null of the EFHW, we put up John’s 40m dipole. Flat-topping around 40-50 feet, this antenna would stay on 40 meters for the duration of Field Day. We would switch antennas between the CW and phone positions, but would always have a radio 40 meters since it is a 24-hour “money band.”
Operating
Carl and I operated primarily CW, John primarily phone. John and I attempted to operate FT8 from the phone station Saturday evening, but ran into software and logging difficulties that made forced us back to sideband.
Modes by operator:
QSOs by Hour:
Bonus Points and Crossband Repeat
In order to scratch our competitive itch, our goal was to achieve as many Field Day bonus points as possible. Some were unattainable without a Get on the Air (GOTA) station. Our spartan, 3-man Field Day operation made no accomodations for a GOTA station. Therefore, we tried to leave as few points on the table as possible.
One of the more time-consuming Field Day activities is traffic passing. In the best case, this means checking into a local 2 meter traffic net and originating some messages. The closest 2m repeater hosting traffic nets was in Greensboro. We were too far away to reach the repeater with my vehicle-mounted 50W mobile rig. This meant that we potentially would need to pull two of our three operators away from the two HF stations, position one in the parking lot at the top of Morrow Mountain, position the other at our Field Day site (cabin), and relay messages into the 2 meter traffice net. Field Day rules require that messages originate from the Field Day site (in our case, the cabin).
(Carl or John?) had an idea to park the 50W mobile and use the crossband repeat feature as an “automatic relay”. We could use our HT from the cabin to reach the mobile station on 70cm which would then repeat our signal on 2m to the traffic net. John and I positioned the vehicle early Saturday afternoon. When it was time for the traffic net, Carl went to the back porch and began originating the traffic. After some confusion with the net control operator, he was successful. The Kenwood TM-V71A crossband repeat feature has a hard-coded PTT tail. The net control operator
Winding Down
When Field Day ended at 2pm local time, a collective sigh was heaved. We were very pleased with our effort. Naps dotted the afternoon as we started taking down antennas and packing up radios. Moving slow felt good. The day ended with a feast. Steaks and all the fixins were the celebratory meal capping the end of our Field Day weekend. We would finish packing up and would depart the following Monday morning. It was nice to not be in a rush on Sunday and to have time to celebrate our effort, reflect on successes and potential improvements, and begin to think about Field Day 2026.
Results
The December issue of QST is always one of my favorites and is up there with the antenna issue. December of course is when Field Day results are published. Since this was our first go as a three man operation, I was eager to see how we compared to other operations.
In a nutshell, we did very well. There’s always room for improvement, but we have a lot to be proud of. The highlights:
Summary by Final Score:
- #136 out of exclude-check-logs (96.89% percentile) overall
- #26 out of 297 (91.25% percentile) in our category
- #xx out of yy (zz.zz percentile) amongst other 3-person stations
- #7 out of 147 (95.24% percentile) in North Carolina
Summary by Total QSOs:
- #xx out of yy (zz.zz% percentile) overall
- #xx out of yy (zz.zz% percentile) in our category
- #xx out of yy (zz.zz percentile) amongst other 3-person stations
- #xx out of yy (zz.zz% percentile) in North Carolina
Summary by Bonus Points:
- #xx out of yy (zz.zz% percentile) overall
- #xx out of yy (zz.zz% percentile) in our category
- #xx out of yy (zz.zz percentile) amongst other 3-person stations
- #xx out of yy (zz.zz% percentile) in North Carolina
N1MM Summaries
Score Summary: