06/25/2007 | K5WNH There is no such thing as a "bad field day"! I put my antennas (inverted vee & TH-3Jr) up Friday afternoon/evening and everything looked fine...same site as the last 5 years, the difference being excessive rains all spring. I drove home (45 miles each way)and tried to sleep....upon returning Saturday morning, to my surprise, a very strong thunderstorm has passed over during the night and both antennas were damaged (neither functioned). I suppose this is the purpose of field day....learning to deal with the unexpected! After lowering both telescoping poles, the damaged antennas were repaired and normalcy returned. For the first time since working QRP CW at field day, I had more contacts on 40 meters than 20...were the conditions better or maybe changing antennas helped...a 3/2 wavelength inverted vee for 40 meters at 50' in the center. At the start of field day, 15 meters was quiet and 20 was "ho hum" on this end....it promptly turned into a two band field day (for the most part)..40 and 20 meters. There seemed to be an improvement Sunday morning on 15 meters as signals started to roll in by noon. I used the same rig as last year (Yaesu) but expect to run the Elecraft K1 from here on...smaller and easier on the battery. See you next year!! -- K5WNH