FIELD DAY 2015 @ KA2BEO

My 22nd consecutive Field Day was a rainy and windy one, so I decided to operate indoors for a few hours on Saturday. Once the rain stopped on Sunday, I set up outdoors and operated for the last hour, operating for less than 4 hours total of the 24-hour event. The station consisted of an Icom (IC-706MkIIg) 100-watt transceiver that was powered by the commercial AC mains (operating class D) for the first time during all my years of participating in Field Day. The antenna was an MFJ (MFJ-17758) 85-foot long dipole, situated about 16 feet high. I worked all stations on the 40-meter Amateur Radio band this year, because the 80-meter loading coil extensions on the antenna were not operating properly, most likely due to contact corrosion after years of extreme weather conditions. Also, the 20-meter band was not very active when I checked it, so I stayed on the 40-meter band, and used both CW (Morse code) and LSB (lower-sideband) voice communications. Again this year, the SSB (single-sideband) phone conditions were not as good as most years, so I stuck with CW for most of the air time. Working the ARRL (American Radio Relay League) headquarters in Newington, CT was a nice surprise for the second consecutive year. Only a small region of the United States from Maine to Virginia and west of New Jersey to Michigan was worked on the one band. However, the Michigan (1D-MI) contact didn't count in the log, due to rules excluding the score of all class D stations, when operating class D. Another good Field Day, but I hope to do more operating next time. 73 de Rob, KA2BEO.