Thanks for sharing Wayne.
Yvon
AE7YD
On 5/20/26 09:27, Wayne Burdick via Elecraft wrote:
Field Day is known for its challenges. As promised, here are a few of my
own recollections of FD, from humorous to disastrous, in no particular
order.
* * *
The Insects
Many parts of the country have far worse problems with mosquitos, gnats and
no-seeums than we do in coastal California. But my son and I unwittingly
discovered where all of our own insects were hiding: under trees. On one
especially hot FD weekend, the intense sun compelled us to find shade. We
unfolded our chairs and table beneath a huge old oak, noting (as an aside)
how our shoes were half-buried in soft brown leaves. Half an hour later we
hastily backed out, our legs now covered with bites from ants, spiders, and
who knows what else.
The Wind
One FD eve after the high bands had closed down I returned to my tent to
nap. After a few minutes I was awoken by high winds. Worried about tree
branches above, I left the tent, which I had neglected to stake down. The
wind then picked up the tent and rolled it some hundred feet across a
parking lot. It took three of us to recapture what had now become a
billowing spinnaker and wrestle it back to the ground.
Debut of the KX1
The first year I took a KX1 to FD, I drove to the top of 6000' Mt.
Hamilton. I was operating at a picnic table, with a nearly invisible wire
antenna deployed in a tree above, when two strangers showed up. They sat
across the table from me, eyeing the radio. Now, the KX1 is about 3.5 x 1 x
6" -- pretty small for a transceiver. So after a few minutes one guy sets
down his Coke and says with a drawl (I'm not making this up): "Where's the
rig?" He thought it was a keyer. A few minutes later his companion asked,
in all sincerity, "Where's the mic?"
Code Speed Challenge
When my son and a friend of his joined me at a club FD outing east of the
Bay Area, they were excited about a new toy they'd brought -- a
code-practice text generator. The unit had a speed control with a range of
5 to 70 WPM. They were both just starting to learn code and were thrilled
to be copying some characters at 13 WPM. Then they got the idea of testing
*me*. I said "set it to 30" and copied enough to prove I wasn't faking it.
But they wanted to see how high I could go. So did I. I waited until I'd
caught my limit of cold Coronas (2), knowing this would put me in The Zone,
then had them start bumping the speed up in 5 WPM increments. With the
other ops as witnesses I managed to copy 15 letters in a row at 65 WPM,
surprising myself as much as anyone else. To this day, Corona is my beer of
choice for Field Day.
Yagi Burnout
I participated in a club gathering outside San Jose for several years in a
row that featured a portable three-element triband yagi at about 30 feet, a
couple of 100 W rigs, an elaborate logging setup using networked laptops,
and a frightening array of snacks that could raise your cholesterol levels
whether or not you ate them. The ops had a good time but they weren't a
competitive bunch, so that after several hours we'd logged maybe 50 QSOs.
In the afternoon a carload of visitors showed up to ask what we were doing.
They got the full tour. But since I'm really a QRP guy at heart, I backed
away from the operating position, grabbed my KX2 and an AX1 whip, and took
a few of them out to the parking lot. I attached the whip and a 13'
counterpoise and started tuning around on 20 m. They were baffled. "Don't
you need a big antenna, like that one?" someone asked, pointing at the
yagi. "No," I said. They watched as I made first an SSB contact, then one
on CW, then one on RTTY, using the KX2's keyer paddle and display. Mind
you, I was standing the entire time, with just the rig, no computer or
phone. Our highest QSOs-per minute rate for the weekend were those three on
the KX2.
The Flu
Last year my son and I were determined to do FD on the high mesa above
Point San Pedro, a spectacular spot accessed via a steep dirt trail at
Devil's Slide. Problem, though: I started feeling sick on the drive there.
After we parked I rallied a bit, so we started up the trail, though at
about a tenth of my normal speed. Before we even got to the first ocean
overlook, a wave of nausea hit me, so we found some hard soil, sans leaves
or insects, where I could recline. I looked up at patches of sunlight
through the waving branches of cedar trees and decided I wasn't going to
skip FD just because of a little flu. So I had Griffin unpack my KH1, set
it up, and hand it to me. This was the first time I'd logged while prone,
something we'd anticipated by including detent in the KH1's log tray so it
can't flop down. I managed a few QSOs, then we packed up. On the way back I
had to stop three times, sitting on the trail with my head dipped, to keep
from passing out. Needless to say, Griffin got to drive us back to Belmont.
Much later he showed me a photo he'd snapped, surreptitiously, of me on the
ground, battling the forces of Murphy's army.
* * *
73,
Wayne
N6KR
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