Falmouth ARA once again held its annual FD operation at the Barnstable County Fairgrounds here on Cape Cod.   Setup commenced on Friday morning with assembly of antennas and erection of three of the club's military surplus AB-577 towers as well as a shorter surplus tower loaned by the Barnstable County Sheriff's office.  This year, our 2A operation used tribanders for 20-15-10 meters, and 40m and 80m dipoles for the CW and SSB positions, as well as a tribander on the short tower and wire antennas for GOTA, plus 6m & 2m yagis for VHF.  The change in the ARRL Field Day rules this year permitting setup on the field as early as Thursday evening local time made our work much easier, allowing us to start Friday at 9 AM and finish towers and antennas by mid-afternoon.

Setup was completed on Saturday morning, with all stations located in a central 40’ by 40’ tent provided by the Barnstable County Sheriff's office.  The central tent, which we began using a couple of years back, has been a great success, with everyone able to be in the middle of all activity.  The K1RK CW, SSB, and VHF stations, as well as the GOTA station (operating under W1HQH) were located in individual screen tents along two sides of the main 40’ by 40’ canopy, with the remainder of the central tent serving as our "food and ragchew" area.  Power was provided by a propane fueled generator that ran steadily all weekend – if you haven’t converted your generators to propane, check it out. 

K1RK (and W1HQH) commenced operation on schedule at 2PM and ran for 24 hours.  Operating conditions & propagation were reasonably good for all stations this year.  We had a number of visitors and several young folks who dropped in to check out the FARA operation. My 10 year old granddaughter was pleased to make a number of contacts at the GOTA station on Sunday morning (and was really getting into it on 15m when she reluctantly had to head for home). The weather was great for setup on Friday (clear and fairly cool in the mid 70s).   And it remained quite good all weekend with a good breeze all the time and was only a little warmer by Sunday teardown.     

Other highlights included a great cookout on Saturday suppertime – I think we had at least 40 people for good food and fellowship.  And, yum! -  sausage, bacon, eggs, and English muffins for Sunday breakfast!   At the VHF station, there was a bit of Sporadic-E this year, and our best contacts were west to MN, southwest to STX, east to the Azores and south to St. Martin in the Caribbean on 6m.   The CW, SSB, and GOTA stations, as usual,  worked all over the US and Canada as well as some DX.

 All in all, a great weekend - good weather, good conditions, and a good time for all who participated.  Thanks to all who came out this year!