Once again the annual ARRL operating “event” named Field Day has come and gone.  The Dog Hollow Contest Group (call-AK9D) in association with the North American Traffic and Awards Net (NATA) participated in this year’s event with a class 3A+GOTA operation.  The GOTA callsign was WGØTA.  Our Field Day site location was Belton Memorial Park in Belton, Missouri.  Our crew was made up of KUØG-Jim, KCØVTJ-Jeremiah, KCØVQN-Doug, and WVØT-Philip.  On Friday evening we scouted out the location and planned where we would place antennas.  We also demonstrated our sometimes humorous but mostly poor skills at placing ropes over tree branches.  It was then time to retire to a local eatery and watering establishment. 

Bright, and not so early, the next morning we were back at the site in force with gear in hand.  Our first challenge was a parking lot full of cars and lots of parents with kids in uniforms all over the place.  The baseball field across the parking lot was hosting a little league tournament.  They would end up being our “neighbors” for the entire weekend.  So we start setting up our tents and antennas and radios, computers, generator, power and coax lines, etc.  All the “stuff” one needs for a Field Day site.  Did I mention it was hot?  It was HOT.  By noon we were in the mid 90s and on our way to 100+ by mid-afternoon.  Humidity was pretty darn close to the temperature.  HOT!  I brought my trusty tent ventilation system (an old box fan) but KUØG did one better.  He brought a small window air conditioner.  Ever try to install a window A/C unit into a tent?  Two words, duct tape, and lots of it.

At T-minus 30 minutes (that would be 1730UTC) the second challenge.  We were using N1MM as our logger and KUØG’s laptop decided that not only did it not want to talk to the WiFi network; it also didn’t want to talk to his radio.  After much cursing and pounding of keys we discovered that the radio problem was with a USB-to-serial adapter.  It worked fine with HRD, but not with N1MM.  Big surprise, USB adapters are evil.  Anyway, we worked through all of that and KUØG was on the air at the start of the event.  The laptop for KCØVTJ’s station decided it didn’t want to run N1MM at all even though it ran fine 2 days earlier during the final test of the network.  No resolution for that so VTJ was stuck with paper logging all weekend.  By 1830UTC all stations were on the air. 

KUØG was running CW, WVØT was running RTTY, and KCØVTJ was doing search & pounce on phone.  Saturday evening we managed some pretty decent rates.  KUØG was running in the mid 60’s with a few bursts up to 100+ per hour.  On RTTY WVØT was running in the 40-50 range and managed to hit 100 at one point.  The number of RTTY stations was way up from 2009.  KUØG switched to phone and his rate shot up to over 120 at one point.  Saturday night we saw a good long run, especially on 20M and 40M.  We stopped for dinner around 0430UTC.  After dinner the bands had died down quite a bit but there were still stations to work.  By 0730UTC we were in “over-night” mode.  KCØVTJ was our over-night operator and kept us on the air until morning.  Next morning by 1200UTC we were back in full force with all stations on the air.  Run rates were still pretty good until the last hour.  The usual flurry of activity during the final hour didn’t happen this year.  From reading the soapbox entries on the 3830 reflector this seems to be the way it was all over the country.

Sunday morning brought us a nice thunderstorm and rain for about 90 minutes which cooled things down some but increased the humidity, of course.  Did I mention it was hot?  After the initial problem with the laptops no other equipment issues came up.  All the radios, power supplies, antennas worked fine.  We ended up with 814 QSOs (CW-288, SSB-332, RTTY-194) and 710 bonus points for a total score of 3,302.  We worked all states and all but 4 of the ARRL sections, missing only NNY, VI, MB, and NL.  Our radio equipment consisted of a Kenwood TS-480SAT, a Kenwood TS-850SAT, an Elecraft K3, and a Kenwood TS-450.  Antennas were a Buckmaster OCF-7 wire, a homebrew windom, a G5RV, and a 40M dipole.  Power supplies were all Astron. 

We will be back in Belton next year and would enjoy seeing more NATA people there.  We could use all the operators we can get.  CQ FD DE AK9D.

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