Winter Field Day 2021 – AD5XI

Winter Field Day is a unique event, and not something we have in the UK. The rules are similar to the ARRL Field Day event in summer, but are in some respects quite different.

Due to the ongoing (still) COVID-19 pandemic the organisers changed the rules to allow individual club members to participate and then contribute to an aggregate score for the club, rather than running multi-operator stations as a club.

As January in Maryland is quite cold, and indeed this year included snow on Sunday, I opted to operate as a 1H from the shack at home. I had been tempted to operate from the car as a 1O, but that would have precluded any 80m operating and would have reduced my operating time quite considerably.

I’d have preferred to be with the club in a team event, but nevertheless I had fun operating. I wasn’t chasing maximum points, but was aiming to maximise my QSOs, all CW.

   Band     QSOs     Pts  MLT  chk  Pt/Q
    3.5      34      68    1   22   2.0
      7      44      88    1   25   2.0
     14      74     148    1   31   2.0
     21       6      12    1    3   2.0
  Total     158     316    4   81   2.0
 Score: 2,528

As I was operating from the shack, on mains power I didn’t qualify for any bonuses, but I was pleased overall with the result.

Conditions weren’t great. Stations on the West coast were weak, though workable in small numbers.

Same station as usual, IC-7610 with 100W to the attic dipoles.

As the deadline for log submissions is quite long we won’t know how well CARA K3CUJ did in the listings, but we had 11 operators submitting logs that we know of.