First ever Field Day for the Augusta University ARC, from the EOC of Augusta University's Critical Event Preparedness and Response (CEPaR) center. Thanks to all of CEPaR's staff for not only hosting the event and providing the radios, but for helping get all the antennas up, and then letting us stay the night too. FD was already a success on Saturday, with the stations working smoothly, and lots of local visitors dropping by. An hour after sunrise on Sunday, we were counting our points, when Darby KK4PEQ announced he had just worked a station on 6M phone--just playing around on 50MHz using the 20/15/10 tribander. He stayed on 6M for five QSOs, but we quickly QSY'd to 10 and 15, finding those bands were open to just about everywhere, and we doubled our score in just three hours. What a rush.  

Special shoutout to Miller KK4KTM for his unwaivering support of Augusta University's fledgling amateur radio club, for getting the operating space ready, for his amazing sense of positivity and possibility, and for supplying an endless quantity of iced tea. He knows much (all?) about emergency communications, but this was his first serious ham radio 'contest' experience. Late in the contest, he mentioned one lesson learned about radiosport: leave the decaffeinated tea bags at home. Words to live by. 

We love pretty much everything about this latest generation of ham radio technology, including the amazing ICOM radios at our disposal and of course automated dupe checking, WinKeyers, and modern logging software. But. Our tribander, responsible for most of our points, was a Wilson System 33 antenna from ~1980, picked up for $100 and raised to just 20 feet. Designed (right?) without any computer modelling, and, in following the instructions, fed with no balun or other matching network. Many of you would say we overpaid. But just completely perfect for FD sporadic Es on 10M. And totally fine on 20M too.