The ACARA participated in the Winter Field Day Association’s “Winter Field Day” (inf0) on Saturday, January 27, 2018, in a small cottage on the Riordan farm near Coolville, Ohio. While the Winter Field Day ran for a full 24 hours, this being the first time the ACARA participated in the event, it was decided to operate only during daylight hours on the Saturday of the event.
The following ACARA members participated:
Josh Cash, KE8EAS
Tyler Hooker, AK5HT, and his young daughter, Zelda
Eric McFadden, WD8RIF
Miles McFadden, KD8KNC
Brynn Riordan, KB8JDH
Robert Riordan, KA4VNK
Andy Young, KD8WVX
The station consisted of Robert Riordan’s ICOM IC-718 entry-level HF transceiver, an LDG Z100 Plus automatic antenna tuner, and a Samlex switching power supply. Logging was with N1MM Logger+ on a Windows laptop provided by Eric McFadden. The antenna was a 10m/15m/20m/40m trap-dipole provided by John McCutcheon, suspended as an inverted-vee with the center at 23′ from a military mast. Miles McFadden cooked dinner of brats and dogs, baked beans, potato salad, cole slaw, and kettle-chips for those present and Robert Riordan provided an array of snacks and soft-drinks to the operators.
Set-up commenced shortly after noon on Saturday and by the time dusk and tear-down arrived, a total of 119 QSOs had been made by Josh, Tyler, Eric, Robert, and Andy. While both 20m and 40m, CW and SSB were tried, only two QSOs were made on 20m and only 18 QSOs were made with CW; the vast majority of the QSOs were 40m SSB. Josh earned the title of the team’s “MVP” by making 95 of the 119 QSOs.
The club callsign of W8UKE was used for the operation and bonus points were earned for operating away from home and for operating with emergency power. The final score was 137 QSO points, a score-multiplier of 3, and 3,000 bonus points for a total submitted score of 3,822 points.
After tear-down, the consensus was that the event was fun and Winter Field Day should become a fixture in the ACARA calendar.
73,
Eric McFadden, WD8RIF
President, Athens County Amateur Radio Association
