W7FSL Field Day 2015 in Northern Arizona.

Here in central AZ, for obvious reasons, clubs planning an outdoor Field Day head to the cool pine-shaded mountains. Our club at work, W7FSL, headed up to the Mogollon Rim above Payson AZ. We selected a nice spot the SOTA guys knew about, “Myrtle Point” at: 34.3808, -111.1477, 120 miles of pavement and 15 miles of passenger-car-accessible dirt road into the Coconino National Forest.

We set up as 5A Battery with Solar chargers. AA4Q ran the 40/80m station, K7JFD ran 20m, W7DDM ran digital, WA7JTM & KA7CVJ covered the 15m and the 10m/VHF stations. We also had a bunch of non-ham coworkers with families join us. For a few of them it was their first ever camping trip or introduction to ham radio.

Except for 15m & up we used wire antennas. That 5 Watt power level made it a real challenge.

Then in the afternoon a pair of thunderstorms came thru, the first storm, mid-afternoon, put so much QRN on the bands it was painful to operate. The second one, just as it got dark, had nearby lightning, so we pulled down or disconnected all the antennas and were off the air till after midnight (by then, only the 40m/80m op had to go without sleep). Losing 4 or 5 hours of prime 40m and 20m air time really cost us. While we were off the air, we heard sirens in the distance, we later learned a group of hikers several miles up the road were sheltering under a tree during a lightning strike resulting in several injuries and one fatality.

We used 2m handhelds as an intercom between our stations and with a few other Field Day clubs nearby, that was helpful notifying everyone when the storms came through.

We ended up with 544 QSOs. The majority of them CW. With the multipliers and bonus points we have a respectable score.