It was a nice day for radio, operating from a picnic area in the Kaibab National Forest, 25 miles west of Flagstaff AZ along old US-66. This was the first time I used my recently-assembled Elecraft K3S in the field. The K3S did very well at 50W, to ease the load on my 12V/24Ah jumpstart battery. I even made some RTTY QSOs on 20m, something I haven't done during Field Day in about 15 years. Nice to see some cross-country propagation open up late Saturday afternoon into the evening. It was easy to hear the W1AW Field Day bulletin on 14.290 MHz USB early Saturday evening. Since I ran the K3S at 50W, this was the first time I have not done Field Day under my own call sign in the QRP category. It was worth the move up from QRP to the Low Power category.

I made QSOs on 6 different satellites - 4 FM satellites (AO-85. AO-91, AO-92, SO-50), one SSB satellite (CAS-4B), and one digital satellite (NO-84) - during Field Day. The FM satellites were, as expected, jammed with activity, except for one AO-92 pass a few minutes after Field Day started at 1800 UTC Saturday. AO-92 had its 1.2 GHz uplink on at the start of Field Day, and I was one of only 3 stations heard on that pass over the US west coast. I worked one of the other two stations for the first Field Day QSO in my log, earning the 100-point satellite bonus with my first Field Day QSO. NO-84's 145.825 MHz packet/APRS digipeater was active, which was probably the easiest way to get Field Day satellite QSOs. I worked VE7VVC in Vancouver for the only QSO completed during a pass over the continental USA and most of Canada late Saturday afternoon. The next NO-84 pass favoring the west coast saw three other stations with me, and we all worked each other for Field Day QSOs.

As always, Field Day is fun! Looking forward to Field Day 2019...

73!