KY4KY – Bullitt Amateur Radio Society (Kentucky….of course!)

The 2014 Field Day effort of the Bullitt Amateur Radio Society (KY4KY) was a great success! The active and vibrant club located just minutes south of the Louisville Metro area has a great history of putting on very organized and successful Field Day outings.

The set-up began shortly after sunrise, with the placement of the camper/trailer for the CW Station, and a motorhome for the vhf/uhf station. The SSB and GOTA stations employed screened tent canopies for their operating shelters.

Our effort was greatly enhanced by two of the newer members of the club stepping forward and taking on large areas of responsibility for this year’s effort. David N8ZFM volunteered to captain the SSB station, and John N4TVS took the reins of the GOTA station. It is truly heartening to see new members jump at the chance to deepen their activity with the club after being associated with the group for such relatively short period of time. David’s background is in the computer and IT field, so his skills were welcomed greatly when it came to the networking of the stations while using the N1MM logging program. John, although licensed for many years, has not been active on the airwaves and utilized this opportunity to truly begin his amateur radio career.

The forecast for the Ohio Valley was somewhat typical…hot and humid…, but the non-specific forecast of “hit & miss” showers had us wondering if we would be setting up and taking down in the rain. Fortunately, the rain hit well after 2:00 p.m. local time, and did not interfere with the club’s annual cookout event. Although showers persisted in the region, our location stayed dry for the rest of the event.

The bands were certainly active, with 20m and 40m being the most active for those much needed QSO’s. We found 10m and 6m to be virtually void of any activity, with only a very small number of contacts garnered from those higher bands. Unfortunately, 80m was very noisy and it truly was an effort to get those in the log that were able to be heard clearly over the noise. Thankfully, we were able to accomplish one Satellite QSO to satisfy some additional bonus points for our 2014 submission.

Breakdown of Field Day:

 CW contacts: 946

 SSB Contacts: 633

 GOTA Contacts: 69 (all SSB)

 Total Contacts: 1648

 (9 DXCC Entities in the log)

KY4KY took top honors in the 2F category last year, having the best overall score of all the 2F submissions. We can only hope that we do as well this year!