The Edmond Oklahoma Amateur Radio Society, K5EOK, this year decided to host the largest Field Day in Oklahoma (determined from 2017 results).  Instead of the usual 3A we returned to the Edmond Fire Station and Training Center as a 7A station! On our first day we had around 90 sign our attendance book!  An eager crowd arrived Saturday morning ready to have fun and our dinner Saturday evening was very well attended. We were also visited by a few ARRL Oklahoma officials including our Section Manager Kevin O’Dell and State Government Liaison Michael Dean.  Also, to help us celebrate Mayor Charles Lamb and the City Council of Edmond declared it Amateur Radio Week.

Once Field Day began our safety officer was very busy monitoring weather and on many occasions we had to disconnect the antennas.  The rain began as we put the first antenna in the air and except for a few brief periods we had a dark cloud overhead all weekend. The QRN from lightning caused frequent delays with logging contacts in every mode.  Because of the QRN and safety concerns our score is not anywhere near what we had hoped for, however our attendance, a record for the club, makes up for the score! We had many non-club members at our event and some traveled in from other towns.  Employees from the City of Edmond Emergency Management stopped by as well as Edmond Fire Department management.

We setup dedicated ICOM radios on 6, 10, 15, 20, 40 and 80 meters (ICOM, if you're reading this we could use a few IC-7300’s next year!), dubbed the Long Radio Bar and Short Radio Bar.  We also had a dedicated ICOM CW and a dedicated ICOM Satellite station (IC-9100). We did use an Elecraft KX3 transceiver to log 5 contacts at 5 watts using a solar charged battery. The satellite station successfully logged the first Field Day SSB satellite contacts for our club and drew considerable interest from attendees, especially those in the ‘Maker movement’ since it uses a simple $10 Arduino Leonardo to control two inexpensive T.V. rotators to achieve AZ and EL tracking and uses a $10 Arduino electronic compass for automatic orientation in azimuth and elevation.  

Our Field Day 2018 despite the weather was a great success!  We had many people attend and that is the #1 goal of Field Day.  Planning and changes for 2019 are already underway!