Boulder Amateur Radio Club (BARC) - WØDK  

Each and every year for the past 12 years, BARC has set up a 2A Field Day station high above the City of Boulder, Colorado in the Betasso Preserve. The elevation is approximately 6600' ASL. This beautiful location is ideal for an active ham radio club like BARC to hold their annual Field Day effort due to the close proximity of the site to the City of Boulder. Due to its location along a very popular hiking and biking trail, it also affords very good public visibility and accessibility. Despite it's close proximity to the City (only 6 miles away), it might as well be in the wilderness because all sorts of wildlife abound in this Preserve and many times they have been known to wander into downtown Boulder! On any given day you may see mule deer, red, black or gray fox, coyotes, black bears, bobcats, mountain lions and more recently, even a couple of moose have been spotted in the nearby forest. So, it is imperative that we consider our ' furry neighbors' when we set up our weekend Field Day stations.

 The WØDK Field Day stations are well suited for their 2A plus GOTA effort. This is primarily due to the Herculean effort of the BARC Field Day Chairman, Allen, KØARK. He provides the coordination, effort and much of the equipment used on Field Day. Allen, along with the other key members of the Committee, Don, NØYE, Michael, KDØFDJ; Ken, NV5Y; Mike, W3DIF and Gary, WØQN make sure all the nitty-gritty details are taken care of and that Field Day goes off without a hitch. All the rest of us BARC hams and guests need to do is just show up and 'play radio'.

The SSB station consists of a TS-990S into a portable, trailer-mounted 55' retractable tower sporting a 3 element SteppIR beam with the 40M/30M dipole array. The CW station consists of a FT-1000MP Mark-V Field into a fan dipole strung some 50' above the forest floor. The GOTA station this year was a TS-590S working into a very reliable R7 vertical. Powering the stations, tents and the shelter lighting is a very quiet 7Kw Honda generator located some distance away from the operational tents. Both the SSB and CW stations are operated by computer control and we used N3FJP Field Day logging software. With these excellent stations on SSB and CW, we rarely need to 'hunt and pounce' for QSOs because we can usually hold and ‘run’ a frequency at a very good QSO/hour rate throughout the event. 

The band conditions this Field Day seemed to be OK to good in comparison to other recent Field Days, at least as recorded in my ever-diminishing memory bank. We depended on 15M, 20M and 40M SSB to be the ‘workhorse’ bands and they did not disappoint. On CW we utilized 20M, 40M and 80M. One of the more noticeable observations I made was that the raw number of CW stations on the air seemed to be much less than during past years. Perhaps it was band conditions, perhaps it was due to weather related problems in other areas, or maybe CW operators are now on the 'endangered species' list on their way to eventually becoming extinct? There were some times when I felt that I had 'milked' the entire band of CW QSOs but I think that is rather doubtful. I do know that our veteran BARC CW operators are down to just a few of us hardy, gray-haired and/or bald-headed souls.

We managed a respectable score when all was said and done. WØDK made 1275 SSB contacts, and 641 CW contacts plus about 22 SSB Q's on the NØYE GOTA Station on 10M and 6M. Those QSOs, plus the addition of almost a thousand bonus points, gave us a fairly respectable score. That is exciting, considering that this was a fairly casual effort on our part, with no scheduled operators and times or coordinated band changes as we have done in the past.

The weather cooperated very nicely throughout the weekend. Down in the 'flat lands' due east of us, temperatures were in the 90's, but we never saw anything above 70 degrees at Betasso. The evenings cooled down into the mid-50's. During the wee hours of the morning, the temps dropped down to about 40 degrees and a jacket or sweater were definitely needed in order to be more comfortable. No rain, thunder, lightning, hail, wind or anything else unpleasant appeared at our QTH during the entire weekend. And, because there was a light breeze during the evening hours, we weren't bothered by any pesky, blood-thirsty mosquitos! It just doesn't get any better than this weather-wise for Field Day.

We always look forward to visits from our served agencies at our site. This year, the Boulder County Sheriff Department sent up one of our County’s finest. Also, the Boulder Park Rangers showed up and even brought us donuts on Sunday morning… Now that’s a switch!

Food is always the main concern of any Field Day group, and the BARC guys and gals are no different. The BARC Club does support us with a nice stipend to provide our mealtime 'vittles'. But, for the past few years, one of our incredibly generous BARC members, who prefers to remain 'anonymous', has annually donated a very generous amount of cash to our Field Day operating budget to make sure we all eat well. To make certain this all comes together, we have our Grande Chef, Gary Carroll, WØQN take care of all of the food and drink logistics. Joan, KB9TYY always assures that we have a scrumptious dessert because her OM, Ueli KB9TTI and I both share a birthday around each and every Field Day weekend and she provides the most beautiful and delicious cakes for us and our Field Day crew to celebrate it with. But, no birthday candles are allowed on the cake! At our ages, we would have to apply for a County fire permit in order to keep the Wildland Fire Teams from responding to the amount of lit candles on that cake!