Field Day is a day I look forward to and making a bunch of contacts all over this wonderful world.

Last year’s field day, I was with a local club in west-central Missouri. We made just a little over 100 contacts — all on battery and solar power.

This year, I had different plans.

My wife and I needed to be in Tennessee. She had a conference in Franklin the same weekend as field day. I have a fellow Ham that lives in eastern Tennessee.

Well this is PERFECT! I dropped off my wife in Franklin and then drove over to New Market, which is just outside of Knoxville.

We had planned out the whole weekend, except for the weather!!! The forecast called for 80% chance of rain on field day…   BOOOO….

The Main Event

Then field day arrived and no rain! Yippee…. No rain!

W4CEW and I were a little late for the kick off of the events festivities. When we made our way to his ham shack and fired things up. Whoaaa….. the amount of people calling CQ CQ CQ FD!!!

We tuned around and found W1AW on 17m  calling CQ so we threw out our call sign and got a response back and swapped information (W4CEW 2D TN).

In addition, we sat around for several hours talking and listening to the others calling CQ. The next thing you know, the event had came and went.

Let us take some time to reflect on the contact that we made. Yes, I said contact, as in, one contact. That’s all we made was ONE contact! I guess if you are going to make a contact, W1AW is not a bad one to make on 17m!

W4CEW and I had so much fun just hanging out and listening to all the chatter on the radio.

Showing W4CEW all he contacts I made on Winter Field Day back in January 2017!

Notably, W4CEW showing off his QRP rig . . . 1 watt of power!

Need a microphone? No problem just wire one up!

Click here for Field Day 2016!

Demonstrating his homebrew antenna launcher.