This year I operated portable from a rural location in the East Bay hills above Fremont about 25 minutes from my home in town. The "south bunker" where I set up my radio gear is just a concrete-lined hole in the ground and is not insulated. I had an electric space heater running at its highest setting but still needed a warm coat and wool hat to keep warm.

I was using an inverted L with 52 80-foot ground radials.  The inverted L was 70ft tall with a 95 foot horizontal leg. I had an SGC237 remote tuner at the base. It was really nice being able to automatically retune the antenna as I moved up and down the band. In the old days, I would have to run out in the rain to retune the antenna every time I wanted to shift from the lower to the upper portion of the band. Not fun.

I had borrowed an Elecraft K3 for the weekend – a wonderful rig!

There was a windstorm the day before the contest with wind gusts up to 90 mph.   The site's porta-potty blew over, but happily the antenna stood firm.

I did reasonably well, although the East Coast never consistently opened up the way it did last year. The first 6 hours of the contest on Friday were really great, and then all of a sudden it was as if the door slammed shut -- the noise floor rose and QSB became a real problem.  Several times I would be in QSOs were the signals would drop from S7 to S0 in just 5 seconds.

Top Band conditions definitely weren't as good as last year.  Last year's A index was 2 with a K index of 0.  This year's A index was 8 with the K index at 2 most of the weekend.

This year's inverted L was 10 feet taller than last year's, so I had been hoping for better numbers which didn't materialize.  I did manage 275 QSOs with 58 multipliers including a couple JAs and Vermont (#46 toward my 160/QRP/Worked-All-States.)  

And then the electricity to the field site's bunker died at 3 am this morning, so I took a 2-hour nap and ended up making my last contacts via battery and flashlight -- just like Field Day. Except that the outdoor temperature at the bunker was 31 degrees (and 53 degrees inside the bunker.)