Field Day in Review - 2024

Somehow I’ve avoided operating on Field Day for the seven years I’ve been licensed. Life always found a way to keep me busy on the fourth full weekend of June. This year I finally made it out, joining PAARA at Bedwell Bayfront Park.

I’ll admit that I skimmed the announcement so I wasn’t expecting super-stations run out of the back of U-Haul vans or to be operating from a part of the park normally inaccessible to vehicles.

After seeing my Lightning, David (KD0BTO) pointed out the 100 extra points available for running a station on “natural power”. After a careful review of the rules we determined that since my Lightning was charged from solar at home running the station off the truck’s inverter met the requirements. We couldn’t resist trying it out.

The truck didn’t break a sweat making over 40 contacts in the following half hour or so. I would have run the station longer but I learned the club had permits to camp so I had to run home and get my gear. Many thanks to my XYL for putting up with me dragging her along for a last minute overnight.

I usually don’t enjoy waking up at 4AM but operating such a great station while watching the sunrise over the San Francisco Bay was definitely worth it.

Many thanks to Doug Teter (KG6LWE) for coordinating the event, Harry Cline (K4YR) for getting me up to speed on field day operations, Rob Fenn (KC6TYD) for keeping us all fed, Ben Glick (KN6UBF) for his humor when the band wouldn’t cooperate, and all the members of PAARA for making me feel welcome.

73, AI6YM