06/25/2002 | KU4J Field Day 2002 was the first exposure to field day for several of us in our group. Our group consisted of Tim KU4J, Vic K4RVH, Jason KD4BJW, John AB4DN, and Mike K4GU. Since it was Field Day we set up our 2A operation in a field belonging to AB4DN. The field was even complete with cow patties.

We started our setup Friday afternoon and were glad we did as we only got three of the antennas planted before running out of light and stamina. At least we got all of our difficult antennas up and only had the easier antennas left for Saturday morning. By the time ops started we had managed to get a tri-band beam, two Battle Creek Special clones, a helically wound vertical, a T2FD, a 6M quad and a small 2M/70cM yagi up along with two HF and a VHF/UHF station.

We managed to keep the two HF stations going practically continuously and the VHF/UHF operated when we had 6M band openings. We even managed to get a 6M QSO rate of almost 75/hour during the closing stages thanks to an good opening that lasted for almost an hour.

Somehow we managed to miss Alaska and a couple of Canadian sections during the contest in our quest to work all the various sections. But we managed to make over 1200 contacts though and were all quite pleased with our results. Hopefully we can fine tune our setup and operating for next year after having learned lots of things to do and not to do.

Someone told us when we started thinking about Field Day that is was always held on the fourth wet weekend in June. So true to form we had rain from about 12:30 AM to about 8:00 AM local time. Luckily it was light and didn't come with a lot of wind.

Field Day is now in the log for us but I think we're all still trying to recover from all the fun we had! -- K4RVH