AA1PL   2-Bravo,  Rhode Island

Another Field Day has come and gone and if you know me you know that Field Day is a weekend I look forward to all year.  The AA1PL-KB1G two-person Field Day entry  was at the Browning Mill Pond Recreation area of the Arcadia Wildlife Management Area (RI's largest state forest).  We operated from a shaded pavilion overlooking beautiful Browning Mill Pond. Before heading to the site on Saturday morning , we met at the famous Middle of Nowhere Diner for a great breakfast.  We arrived at the site around 10AM Saturday.  After unpacking, we began the important task of getting the antennas up in the trees.  Getting the 135 foot doublet up in the trees proved to be a challenge since the north leg support line went up and over the trees just fine  but it landed among some briars.  We managed to get this antenna up high at the tree tops about 70 feet up. It proved to be a very effective antenna.  The ladder line from this antenna just barely reached the tuner on the picnic table inside the pavilion. 

Besides having a great time, I think Bill & I did pretty good as far as a score goes. Our total score including bonus points is 3908 which is excellent for the 2B-2 operator category . We had a total of 633 CW QSO's and 408 Phone QSO's for a total of 1049 Q's. Bill made 577 Q's (all CW) while I managed 464 (mostly phone but some CW as well). Our peak Q-rate was around 10:40 AM Sunday when we were working 211 stations per hour. We worked 46 states and 4 Canadian provinces. (We missed Alaska, Hawaii, South Dakota and Nebraska). We worked 64 of the 71 ARRL sections nationwide including 7 of the 9 California sections. Not bad results considering we did this with a laid-back ,relaxed attitude and we took several breaks. We also shut down to get  5-6 hours of sleep Saturday night.

Bill used his new Elecraft K3 transceiver (a super radio!) while I used my Icom IC-7000 transceiver which also performed very well. We had 3 HF wire antennas including the 135 foot doublet up at 70 feet (an efficient all band antenna with the tuner) , a 40 meter coax fed dipole and a 20 meter coax fed dipole.  We had a homebrew Moxon for 6 meters up on a 20 foot aluminum pole and a 2 meter J-pole on top of that for monitoring the 76 repeater. We ran about 100 watts on HF and 6. Many stations told me that we had a nice strong signal. We used Bill's quiet Honda generator for electrical power although I shut down the generator and used battery power for over an hour after Bill turned in "early" on Saturday night (he climed into his tent around midnight). I stayed up operating until about 1:30 AM.

Bill slow cooked a delicious Chicken Stew in a crock pot (using generator power of course) for Saturday night's dinner and he grilled up some mouth watering burgers for Sunday's lunch. We had several visitors throughout the weekend, mostly hams who stopped by to check out our "wilderness style" field day. (Okay, I know that Rhode Island doesn't really have any true wilderness,  but the Arcadia Management Area  is as close as it gets here in little Rhode Island!). We had many puzzled mountain bikers pass through on the trail which goes right through our site.  I beleive that they were part of some large group ride or meet.  Bill also brought along his kayak and took a short cruise out on the pond on Sunday.The weather was sunny and warm during the day although there were some brief showers overnight but we stayed dry in our tents. 

Again I thank Bill Boyes, KB1G, for the great fellowship and his awesome contribution to our sucessful and very enjoyable field day weekend. I hope we can do this again next year.