"Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success."  ~ Henry Ford

Our group of intrepid souls each and every year, on the last weekend in June invade the pristine wilderness of the mountainous terrain west of Boulder, Colorado. This group is made up of men and women, both young and the old, intent on bringing tall structures of aluminum tubing and multiple strands of copper wire into the woods in order to capture ethereal voices from the skies on their wireless contraptions. Is this some mystical cult who must make this annual pilgrimage in order to preserve their primitive culture?

Well… not really… actually these beings are our Boulder Amateur Radio Club’s (BARC) Field Day group who, each year at about the same approximate date and time, invade the beautiful Betasso Preserve high above the Town of Boulder in order to put on their annual ARRL Field Day effort. Once again we used the BARC Club callsign of WØDK and ran as a Class 2A station. We made 1741 total QSOs during the 24 hour allotted time period. 1434 QSOs were made on SSB, 10 on PSK-31 and 297 on CW. The claimed QSO points were 4096 and the bonus points claimed were 1290 for a total of 5386 points. This is a very respectable score for a 2A low power entry.

Many thanks to Allen Bishop, KØARK our Field Day chairperson who  organized a fine effort and provided the use of his FT-950, his 6.5 Kw generator, mobile 60-foot telescoping tower and 3 Element SteppIR beam. The CW station consisted of a FT-1000 Field Mk-V and an extended G5RV up between two trees at 60 feet. The antenna went up easily using the wrist rocket technique to launch the initial lines. Everything worked to perfection and we emitted an excellent signal on all bands on every mode. Key SSB ops were Dan Oetting, NØBAF and our BARC newsletter editor Mike Stutzer, KDØFDJ with lots of help from many other ops. Our CW stalwarts were Ken Rawlings, NV5Y and Tom Walsh, W2CO.

The GOTA station was run by Jim Andrews and used his callsign of KH6HTV. The equipment used was a FT-897 and a R-7 Vertical. This station was also set to operate on the digital modes. Some of the operators of this station made their very first ham radio QSO. We also used the PSK-31 capabilities of this station to “capture” the W1AW Field Day Bulletin. What was interesting was comparing the PSK-31 copy to the RTTY copy of the same bulletin on the same band at almost the same time. The PSK-31 was nearly 100% and the RTTY copy was about 60%, at best.

This year our demo mode for educational training was ATV. Jim Andrews set up a portable TV transmitter in the operating SSB tent and we were able to view the operation at the main shelter on a TV receiver where the public was gathered for most of the day. ATV is a mode most used by our Boulder County ARES group for monitoring forest fires and flood areas. Our ARES group ATV operation during the huge "Four-Mile Fire" earlier this year was featured in the May 2011 QST Magazine on page 96. Many of our Field Day ops here were part of that operation.

Our VHF/UHF "Guru", Don Nelson, NØYE set up his IC-706 rig and homebrewed 6-meter 3-el beam and we logged over 200 SSB QSO's on the "Magic Band" alone. The band stayed open until well after dark much to our surprise.

Packet messages were sent from the site via 2M by BCARES AEC Dale Scott, KAØQPV to the WØIA packet BBS where NTS Traffic Manager, Ed Schlicting, KBØTVH picked them up and relayed them to the addressees.

We were visited by Boulder City Councilman, Will Toor who had been invited by BARC. Will biked his way up the Boulder Canyon to our site and was quite interested in the PSK-31 mode. Once again we were visited by members of our served agency from the Boulder county Sheriffs Office.

“Mr. Anonymous” a BARC member, donated a very princely sum of money to assure that we could provide the Field Day group with a sumptuous steak fry! It is the wish of “Mr. Anonymous” that everyone who participates in the BARC Field Day fully enjoys their experience with excellent food. And, once again, our head chef Gary Carroll, WØQN did not disappoint the crowd.

Congratulations to the BARC “seniors” and all the others who helped make this a truly fun Field Day event. There were some 45 people who participated before it was all said and done.

EXTRA! EXTRA! EXTRA!

BARC Seniors 2011 Field Day Results

2011 BARC Field Day group, operating up at Betasso Preserve, did a great job finishing in the top 10% of all the 2251 stations in the 2A classification finishing 223rd with 5,386 points total. Congratulations to Allen Bishop, KØARK, BARC Field Day Chair, the BARC Seniors and all others who participated.

The Details

The BARC seniors, operating as WØDK along with KH6HTV on the GOTA, finished with 5,386 points, placing in the top 9% of ALL stations and ranked 248th out of the 2632 total Field Day stations in the US and Canada participating in ALL classes and power levels.

• WØDK finished 60th out of the 387 stations in the 2A Category in the USA and Canada.
• WØDK finished 11th out of the 124 stations in ALL classes in the Rocky Mountain Section.
• WØDK finished 3rd out of the 17 stations in the 2A class of the Rocky Mountain Section.
• WØDK finished 8th out of the 65 stations in ALL classes in Colorado.
• WØDK finished 3rd out of the 10 stations in the 2A class in Colorado

73 and see you all next June!