Winter Field Day

Another snowy weekend, another contest. Or, given it was Winter Field Day, I guess I should say “contest.”

Like the ARRL 10 Meter contest in December, I sat in front of the radio this weekend and racked up contacts while heavy snow fell. We had a basketball game on the calendar before the storm hit, so I had no plans to operate outside the house. When basketball was cancelled, that gave me more radio time. From the comfort of my heated home using full power and an established antenna. Not exactly what the spirit of WFD is all about. But I tend to think any radio “event” is about getting on the bands and making contacts first.

Most of my log entries were 1H like me. Again, probably not what the organizers envisioned, but when you have a massive storm barreling across half the country in January folks are going to stay home.

In the end I submitted 95 contacts. Sadly nothing that will fill in my final three WAS slots. I did land a few Indiana contacts, which are rare for me since I am seldom on 80 at night. I even heard an operator who is 12 miles away from me on 20 Sunday afternoon. He had a good pileup going so I wasn’t able to see if my ground wave was reaching his QTH. I was purely a hunter. One of these days I’ll get confident enough to call CQ during a contest.

Not a bad performance given we had a birthday dinner Saturday evening, a college basketball game to watch, and then spent over three hours outside in multiple shifts getting the 10+ inches of snow cleared away from our driveway.