Field Day 2014

Field Day 2014 was my very first ARRL Field Day event. After previously working a lot of contacts during different ARRL events, the Field Day event was highly anticipated by myself and the rest of the Club. We organized everything pretty well. From press releases to invitation to elected officials, we had all of the “bonus” points that we could muster, covered. I set it up with Chris Connolley and his partners to work Field Day from the McDonald’s parking lot in Madison WV. This was a good location for Field Day work. We were not able to setup as many antennas as we would have liked, however, we were able to make a bunch of phone contacts via my Eagle One vertical antenna.

We elected to setup right on time at 14:00 hours, because as we thought, our setup would not take long and we could get on the air immediately without the worry of a 3 hour penalty for early setup. Anyone setting up early lost 3 hours at the end of Field Day, we however, could keep going. We did not realize that this would prove problematic as most other clubs out there setup early and thus, would not be on the air the last 3 hours. This was an issue. We didn’t have very many people to contact and so, we chose to shut down early.

All-in-all, it was a great experience. Many HAMs stopped by to visit. We made many contacts with people from the community and HAMs world-wide. I look forward to doing something similar at Field Day next year.

Here’s a complete blog about our Club’s Field Day Activities, broken down by year.