07/17/2004 | KC4KFC CQ Field Day KC4 Kentucky Fried Chicken!

I haven't participated in Field Day in several years. But this year I decided to do Field Day with my 13 year old son Ian and my brother, Mark, KC4KFC. Using some Frequent Flyer Miles, we traveled from Philiadelphia to Nashvile on Friday to participate in Field Day.

The next morning we got up and put up a 80M loop, and a 80M doublet, both fed with 450 Ohm ladder line. Stations were prepared. The first station was a modern rig, an Icom IC-706MkII, with a Heil boom mic and headset. The second rig was a throwback to earlier days, using a Kenwood TS-599D Twins, Astatic D104, and a Johnson Matchbox. This station was delegated to 40M only using the 80M loop.

We were logging using the N3FJP Field Day program - excellent program. Easy to use and very intuitive. We tried to set it up using a peer-to-peer network, but Murphy bit, and I locked myself out of my laptop. After a couple of hurried and desperate emails to my companies IT people via my Blackberry, I was able to get into the laptop - but without network capabilities.

My son Ian did logging duties. We tried to get him to operate the rig, but he was a bit shy. He stayed with it the whole time, staying up late until we snagged KL7 and WH6 on 40M (about 4am).

Propagation was excellent on all bands, concentrating primarily on 15M, 20M and 40M. The workhorse band was 40M, where we got most of our sections. The 40M loop worked well, but had an apparent null to the NE. It was fun watching the band lengthen as morning came. We tried 80M, but the QRN was a bit much. We tried for WAS over the weekend, but missed NM and VT. We missed a clean sweep by only those two sections. Where was VT and NM?

We, KB0FHP (me), my brother (KC4KFC) and my son Ian had a great time working Field Day 2004, and plan to do it next year - perhaps as QRP. Ian worked hard this year and maybe we will be 3B next year with my son at another rig! -- KB0FHP