Our novel attempt at sparking more integrated approach to the annual Field Day event along with some more camaraderie has now gone into the log books for another year, Apparently it worked because it looks like we broke our best year ever record!

We used our usual 5 military towers again for the main antennae collection. This year the trick would be coax, plenty of coax! We had to get the same kind of separation between the main station towers (CW and Phone) to minimize intermod. Fortunately, with the help of Ralph, N1YHS, what seemed like miles (and tons) of LMR 400 type coax appeared and moving the Phone and CW towers out to the ends of the 500 ft radius around the big top was no problem. The GOTA and VHF towers could stay close to the big tent.

The results are still preliminary and we don't have the final official tally on bonus points yet. We appear to be clawing our way out of the extended solar minimum which seemed like it would never go away. While the solar flux numbers were nothing to write home about, there was a fair amount of HF activity even up through 10 meters. Six meters was the one that produced the surprise with a prolonged period of activity right after the opening bell at 2PM on Saturday and again on Sunday. We fared much better in the QSO department compared to last year, but we also beat our all time high in 2008. The thing that looked like it worked better in our new environment was that there was always an operator ready to jump in if the station went empty.

If there was any complaint about this year's venue, it had to be the food, or lack thereof. Unfortunately all good things come to an end and our previous association with Boston Culinary disappeared in the fog of their being acquired by a much larger organization based in Connecticut. We warned you at the meetings through the year that this was likely to happen and we just didn't have any volunteers to step up and help out with the food. Maybe next year, if this arrangement continues, we can get a reasonable cadre of members and their spouses to pitch in with making the food arrangements. A pile of hamburgers and hot dogs is a rather poor substitute for the luxury we've been use to in years past.

2011 (2A)

2010 (2A)

2009 (2A)

2008 (2A)

CW

Phone

2A