The Oak Ridge Amateur Radio Club (Oak Ridge, Tennessee) 6m Field Day team of Charlie, K4LF, and his son, Ross, KR4USA, had a terrific weekend. FD 2011 stood for Fun Day 2011, not Field Day 2011. We logged 86 contacts, the highest in recent memory.  These 86 contacts were in 27 ARRL sections, in 20 states, and in 48 grids. The state total included a station from that ever-illusive state of Rhode Island. These stats were in spite of pesky line noise that sometimes peaked at S9 when the antenna was pointed in certain directions.

The weekend started on a very good note when the 6m station was operational by 10:30 Saturday morning (14:30Z) and upon the first tuning of the band, PJ6D was heard. We joined the pileup and after about 20 minutes, we snagged him. This was with 70 watts and an Armstrong rotatable dipole 17 feet off the ground. With that contact in the logbook, it was disappointing that no E-skip contact was made until 18:27Z, 27 minutes into the contest, and that PJ6D was never heard again. However, in the end there was plenty of E-skip and BBQ chicken to go around for everyone. 

About 90% of our contacts were split evenly between 1s and 5s, and interestingly, their signals coming in nearly simultaneously at our east Tennessee location. Our bidirectional dipole came in handy for just such a NE/SW E-skip pattern.