Pages

Sunday, November 10, 2019

Field Day 2019 postmortem

Personally, Field Day 2019 was pretty much a disaster. Coming down with a stomach ailment in the middle of the night, making you feel like the Grim Reaper has a hand on your shoulder while standing on a banana peel was no fun. I didn't get to operate nearly as much as I has wanted to; and our QSO total was down as a result. Fortunately, Marv K2VHW and Bob WB2UDC and Bill W2AOF did take up some of the slack. Our results weren't as bad as I had thought they would be.

Field Day is not a contest; and the South Plainfield Amateur Radio Club doesn't consider it to be one or operate it that way. We operate it as an emergency preparedness exercise and we try to push ourselves to our limits to see what we are capable of were we ever truly needed. So in that regard, we do like to see how we fare against other stations in our categories.

How we compared in the standings:
Top 11% all Field Day stations
Top 50% of 3AB stations
Top 10% of all 5W stations
Top 20% of Hudson Division stations
Top 24% of NNJ Section stations

Not bad, but not as well as we usually do. We're already making plans for 2020.  We may go with the Hexbeam for the SSB station from the get go, instead of relying on the "iffy" Mosley.  I am thinking of going with the MFJ-1982LP for the CW station instead of the W3EDP next year. And I definitely want to get a dedicated 160 Meter antenna going for the overnight QSOs for next year.

And I firmly resolve to stay away from anything that contains mayonnaise or any suspect cream donuts in 2020!

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!

No comments:

Post a Comment