The 2024 JSC Winter Field Day at the JSCARC shack was a fun effort by:
- Bekah KD5TDP
- John AB5SS
- Paul KJ5JIO
- David KB5PGY
- Jayant KG5LJZ
- Dave W5OC
Since the Winter Field Day (and the big one in June) is not a contest competition, this was just a good exercise in ham preparedness. Hence, we had a very casual opportunity to work the bands and improve our operating skills.
Major shout out to Paul KJ5JIO, our newest JSCARC member who recently got his General ticket last month. Paul had never been on the air, but fearlessly worked the mic while I helped log on Saturday. On Sunday, he was operating by himself, while aptly operating the Flex Radio like a pro and copying phonetics, Q-codes, and jargon with increasing proficiency.
Also, a shout out to Bekah KD5JDT who accepted an invite to come operate with us even though she just finished a 10-hour shift at work. She expressed interest in helping us out with our ham outreach efforts including with the Lone Star Flight Museum.
Luckily, we had plenty of operating room to accommodate SSB, CW and Digital (Dave KB5PGY worked JTCall on Sunday). With the crummy weather, it was delightful not having to activate the CW or Digital setups in the outside pavilions.
Propagation didn’t seem good at limited times, but mostly a bit poorer than usual. Of course we were limited to only 100W per the rules, so that may have made it seem harder to make contacts vs our 1.5KW signal (ha-ha).
Both John and I had our first real opportunity to play with the Yaesu FTdx101d. We both agree it’s quite a good radio. John helped me learn how to work the knobs- it’s not particularly intuitive and the dazzling display is astounding compared to garden variety rigs.
Some bad news: The Flex B power off by itself and may have suffered an issue, since it was blinking an error code. We’ll have to examine that soon. Hopefully it won’t have to endure another trip back to the factory.
Some good news: John was diligently updating our shack’s internal network and S.A. T. satellite controller, while on occasion working the contest, or helping others. We’re lucky John keeps a lot of our shack’s infrastructure breathing behind the scenes.
On to the big one, Field Day 2025 in June!