Winter Field Day
Flying Pig Style!
Jan. 29th 2011
CW-QRP
Greetings from the Flying Pigs of North Central Tennessee. Well Winter Field Day has come and gone and it was one of the best we have worked. We had some misgivings about the weather and changed our plans several times to accommodate what we thought would be a cold day of operation. Little did we know that it would turn out to be one of the mildest winter field days we have worked in quite some time. Last year the Winter Field Day was snowed out. Most of us did not want to travel to Doc's, NV4T's home QTH because of the snow that covered the whole town of Clarksville, TN.This year we were walking around in T-shirts and drinking cold beverages. The final plan was to operate out of my 27 foot motor home with it parked in my driveway.
My home QTH is located in Montgomery county near the Cumberland River. Our antenna system was my Cushcraft A4 with a 40 meter add on up about 30 feet. I also have a 80 meter dipole trailing off the beam out into the woods behind my house. We were operating with battery power using a K3 with a panadapter belonging to Lewis, KF4WK. I can not say enough about how good this radio is so I will just leave it at "this radio rocks". I should say a little about our operating process. We work CW only at low power (5 watts or less depending on the battery power LOL). In the past visiting operators have declined to operate because we only had an electronic key available. Well this year we had a fantastic straight key, courtesy of Terry, N5HOT plugged in and ready to go for anyone who desired to operate. We started at 11:00 Z kind of slowly, by having Doc, NV4T make the first contact. Doc is our Boss HOG of the Flying Pigs and we try to make him brake the ice by making the first contact. In no time flat he was off and running on 20 meters. We were looking for anyone calling CQ WFD but it seemed that everyone was working on something other than calling CQ for Winter Field Day.
The next best thing was working a station who was involved in a contest other than winter field day. We will copy anyone actually so a little DX from TM2B in France was not a problem. That is right France on 5 watts. Now that is what I am talking about. These guys were working with a special call from the F8KHF club station, we were their second contact of the day. Moving on I took over and F2DX (what a call) was in the log. Peter Brittiger from France was bumming in and it was FB for us. Still no Winter Field Day ops on the air. We worked F6KLO, Edmond from the Radio Club of Brive La Gaillarde in France. Nice signal into Clarksville, TN. Then another DX station TM9FL. This station was not in the QRZ data base but he reported 86 contacts to our 4. The airways were hot with DX, at least on 20 meters. So I tried a little 40 meter action to see if we could make a WFD contact. Sure enough K4BKD, Peter from Marietta, GA. was on and I jumped on him like a Blue Jay on a June bug. His report was 1H 60f. That meant he was working from his house as a single operator and the temp was 60 degrees Fahrenheit. At last we broke the WFD ice and were on our way. Next up was VE3RAM, the op was working out of the Ottawa Valley Mobile Radio Club, in Ottawa Canada. Man that is cool.... he also was working WFD and his report was MO 5C. We were on a roll now.
The band just kept giving up good signals and we started changing ops so others in the group could get a hand in the operation. John, KX6F found KP4AGW, Angel in Puerto Rico. John is a straight key guy and Angel was calling CQ SKCC. What a match.... Great QSO and John had a ball working the K3. Next up was Terry, N5HOT he just had to get in a QSO as we were having all the fun. Terry found ZW7REF, Christian on 20 meters all the way from Brazil. Not a winter filed day contact but what a contact for the log. All in all we made 16 contacts 6 of them were Winter Field Day contacts. Nine of the contacts were DX. One was a rag chew with N0TWV, Maria from Pagosa Springs, Co. I thought she would never stop sending. LOL We had so much fun this Winter Field Day it will be hard to beat next year. I want to thank all those operators who came by, some to operate and some to talk out loud while you are trying to operate. Just check out the video on the KF4L web site and you will get a kick out of me trying to find the earphones on my head. Nothing like being excited about making a contact.
Take care and we hope to see you on the air. 72 from KM6NN, John and all the C.A.T.S. and Flying Pigs from Clarksville.
John, KM6NN
