Field Day 2003
Location: Washington Monument State Park (Middletown, Maryland)
Date: June 28-29, 2003
The entrance: A much used sign, and with the miracle of modern technology, instant photos posted on the post!
The crew: 2003 attendees: back l-r N2AW, KG4PPU, WA3SOR, WA3PYU, WA3KLK, WA3OFC, KG4NXZ, K3MZ, KG4URX; front N3IC, Joel; not shown K3AN, WA3LTJ, KA3VXM, KG4OAP
First, the setup: l-r, Mike, Frank, Jason, and Robert pull up a wire quad; Frank supervises Mike tying down a quad rope while Robert wraps cord around a tree; Steve takes care of the coax; and Robert looks for a suitable target branch. Below, Bill sets up the coaxial stubs.
Get ready: Paul's fancy solar panel begins juicing up the nicad's for our natural power QSO's. Steve's trusty generator fails us for the first time ever, but thankfully Paul has brought along a spare generator to save the day!
Let's Get to It: HF Operators
Top contest op Bob on cw (left);
Bill at the phone station (right)
On phone, Frank with Kathy (left)
and Drew (right)
On cw, Steve (left) and Robert
with Jim (right)
Meanwhile, up at the Monument
Itay works on raising VHF/UHF
antennas
Jason in front of 6 meter quad
View from the top of the monument
Time to operate VHF/UHF: Jason
and Itay (left); Joel and Wes (center); Paul, Steve, Frank, Robert (right)
At the GOTA station: Jason and Itay manage to get the QSO rate to a level which belies their GOTA status!
Socializing: Wes, Bill, Kathy (left); Bill (center); Jim (right)
Frank and son Joel: Frank explains the tuning stubs; operating the HF station; the VHF/UHF station; and work on putting up a quad.
A growling stomach makes for a poor operator: Drew barbeques and then relaxes
Bonus points for non-traditional mode demo: Mike's ATV camera mounted on his car, with antenna broadcasting to the ATV monitor
Click the picture above for Drew's video production of Field Day 2003. Hope you have a broadband connection, it's a 7 MB file!
We went with two transmitters plus the VHF/UHF and GOTA stations, scoring 6138 plus 1100 bonus points. Alas, a new high was too elusive! QSO breakdown:
80 cw - 238
40 cw - 277
20 cw - 151
15 cw - 153
80 ssb - 205
40 ssb - 255
20 ssb - 510
6 phone - 63
146 phone - 41
432 phone - 5
GOTA cw - 5
GOTA phone - 342
Total: 824 cw x 2 = 1648 + 1421 phone = 3069 x 2 = 6138
Operator Stats
Congratulations to our top contest op N2AW, who wins two years in a row!
--- Results from December 2003 QST---
We scored 20th out of 431 (95.3 percentile) non-battery / non-commercial power entries in the 2A category. We scored 22nd out of the total 460 entries (95.2 percentile) in the 2A category (the largest category). We had the highest score in Maryland once again.
Entries ahead of us in the Atlantic Division (DEL, MDC, EPA, WPA, NNY, WNY, SNJ):
Duh... There are none!
(The overall 2A high score was 14,336)
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(Photos by WA3KLK, K3MZ, and N3IC. Designed for viewing in 640 x 480 resolution)