In article , "Dee D. Flint"
writes:

"N2EY" wrote in message
...
In article , "Dee D.
Flint"
writes:

This weekend's Field Day was a prime example of the benefits of CW.
Bands
were very poor most of the weekend and the voice stations struggled to
find
contacts late in the event. Our CW stations far outstripped the voice
stations in total number of contacts.

Worst conditions in a long time.

FD 2003 at N2EY (1B-1 Battery, EPA):

Setup:

K2 #2084 at 5 W outout with KAT2, KAF2, powered by external 7 AH gel cell.
Homebrew coax-fed inverted V with traps, apex at 47 feet, ends at 25 feet,
oriented north-south. About 14 hours on the air.

Results:

80 CW: 89 QSOs
40 CW: 115 QSOs
20 CW: 15 QSOs
Total QSOs: 219 QSOs (2190 QSO points)
Bonuses: Emergency power, W1AW bulletin, message to SM (300 bonus points)
Total raw sco 2490 points

How did others fare?

73 de Jim, N2EY


Well I don't have the club's totals (club call W8HP with our GOTA station on
W8JXU) but our CW guys did well and I took a turn at both of our CW
stations.

I recall working W8HP on at least two bands. Also N8NN. Thanks for the points!

We ran 5A at a nearby park that is used as a Scout camp at times
(bunk beds to sleep in and a place to cook, Yay!).

Good site selection.

For 20m CW and phone,
the count was near 300 each although the voice didn't really pick up until
late this morning. 80 and 40 CW were good but voice was very modest. My OM
picked up one CW contact on 15m this morning and one on 6m yesterday.

20 was the poorest I've seen it in a long time. 15 and 10 were useless here in
EPA.

There
wasn't more than a couple dozen voice contacts on 15m, 10m, and VHF
combined.

It will be interesting to see how the totals work out contest-wide. There may
have been more CW than voice contacts across the board this year. Pretty good
for a mode that we are told is "obsolete", huh, Dee?

However, there's always a silver lining. Most of us got a pretty good
night's sleep since the bands were poor.

I hung in till about 3 AM and was back at it soon after sunrise. Even got in a
short run Sunday morning.

Today, we knocked down most of the
antennas and stations early and just kept our 20m ones running until time to
quit. That left only a minimal teardown to do this afternoon.

Teardown took me less than one hour:

- disconnect the rig and battery
- pull up ground rod
- pack rig, battery, papers, bug, etc. into their respective boxes
- fold up the special homebrew FD table
- tear down tent and roll it up
- untie three antenna ropes and drop antenna
- roll up and pack antenna
- load up car

Probably the quickest getaway yet!

361 days till the next one.

73 de Jim, N2EY