Location: Washington Monument State Park (Middletown, Maryland)

Date: June 23-24, 2012

The crew: 2012 attendees (left to right): N3IC, K3MZ, AJ1DM, WA3PYU, N2AW, W3CID (above Bob), WA3OFC, AG6DF, Logan; Not shown: WA3IRQ, KG4NXZ, WA3LTJ, KB3UNL, KN3U, and behind camera KA3VXM

Frank and crew assembling a tribander mounted on the "Rocket Launcher" tower; Paul gets coax ready. Meanwhile, Bob works on the VHF/UHF tower.

The 20 meter yagi beam on Frank's novel "ladder" tower; Paul's VHF/UHF tower and antennas.

A cellphone extender antenna; the lower dipole. (No pics this year of the 80 meter vee or the Moxon)

Logan brought the missing-in-action WA3SOR's generator and gas cans.

The solar panel charging nicads for the "Natural Power Source" contacts; Victor's sophisticated portable battery charging systems!

Lots of "operating" going on -- at left, Paul runs the CW station; John and Frank at the "Usurper" station; Mike on phone. At right Victor runs GOTA.

Top QSO-rate cw op N2AW can run the freq with his eyes closed; W3CID at GOTA; WA3KLK flew up to Maryland for FD, but injury put him on the DL before it even began -- he had to return to Florida (don't tell him that his mike isn't attached to a transmitter).

After extensive antenna work, WA3OFC operates phone; K3MZ on phone with Victor observing.

Here's a twist: W6VCE in San Diego made a video of his contact with us! A chance for us to hear what we sound like to others. Jason writes:

Hello N3IC,

Thank you for the field day contact. A buddy of mine and I operated W6VCE for field day this year. W6VCE is a club vanity call we obtained many years ago in memory of an old fellow who was very well known in Southern California back in the 1980’s. Anyway, I was able to capture a couple minutes of video using my smartphone, and in doing so, we have live action of us (W6VCE) contacting you (N3IC) on 20m cw. At the very end of the video we inserted a sound clip of our old friend Jim, W6VCE. Not relevant to you or my email today, but you may wonder what the heck is going on at the end of the video if I didn’t tell you in advance. FYI – Found your FD 2012 webpage. I used to live in Northern Virginia (1988 to 1990). It’s so beautiful and green there compared to the brown yuck of San Diego shrubs. I did not get to Maryland much when I lived back there, but I sure enjoyed Northern VA. I hope your group enjoyed field day this year as much as ours did.

73!

Jason, NF6E - on behalf of the very small W6VCE field day team.

He used a Yaesu FT-857D using 20m ham stick and 20 watts, powered by 7ah lead acid battery, not vehicle battery. From our log:

Lee chats with Gordon -- who knew that 40 years later and 3000 miles away from Randallstown, they would end up living mere blocks from each other! WA3IRQ with Frank, with whom there's more to catch up on.

Maryland state Senator Chris Shank brings his son who makes a GOTA contact (plus we get the bonus points)

We went with two transmitters. QSO breakdown:

80 cw - 190
40 cw - 541
20 cw - 495
15 cw - 143
80 ssb - 464
40 ssb - 488
20 ssb - 158
15 ssb - 53
6 phone - 18
6 cw - 4
2 phone - 5
432 phone - 2
Satellite phone - 0
GOTA phone - 225
GOTA cw - 0

1. N3IC 564 cw, 1 phone (1129 equivalent points)
2. N2AW 554 cw, 7 phone (1115 equivalent points)
3. K3MZ 255 cw, 48 phone (558 equivalent points)
4. WA3LTJ 405 phone (405 equivalent points)
5. WA3OFC 258 phone (258 equivalent points)
6. WA3PYU 250 phone (250 equivalent points)
7. AJ1DM 160 phone (160 equivalent points)
8. KN3U 51 phone (51 equivalent points)
9. KG4NXZ 51 phone (51 equivalent points)
10. WA3IRQ 48 phone (48 equivalent points)
11. W3CID 47 phone (47 equivalent points)
12. AG6DF 36 phone (36 equivalent points)
13. Logan 21 phone (21 equivalent points)
14. KB3UNL 20 phone (20 equivalent points)
15. Vijay 6 phone (6 equivalent points)
16. Jesse 1 phone (1 equivalent points)
17. Toby 1 phone (1 equivalent points)
18. Job 1 phone (1 equivalent points)
19. Jonah 1 phone (1 equivalent points)

Field Day - 2012-06-23 1800Z to 2012-06-24 2100Z

  [these are messed up and wrong due to mixed log files]

Field Day - 2011-06-25 1800Z to 2011-06-26 2100Z - 225 GOTA QSOs

          GOTA (K3MZ call) Max Rates:

2012-06-23 1902Z - 2.0 per minute  (1 minute(s)), 120 per hour by KG4NXZ
2012-06-23 1923Z - 1.2 per minute  (10 minute(s)), 72 per hour by KG4NXZ

     GOTA (K3MZ call) Runs (holding a frequency with CQ) >10 QSOs:

2012-06-23 1916 - 1947Z,    7238 kHz, 32 Qs, 62.1/hr KG4NXZ