Spokane DX Association

SDXA FIELD DAY 2008

Kirk K7EKM operating at the SDXA Field Day site at the home of Dan N5AR near Deer Park, WA

Dan, N5AR, graciously hosted the Spokane DX Association Field Day this year. This was our first attempt at 2D, two transmitters operating from a permanent installation using commercial mains for power. Club members and two guests made 1,065 QSOs on CW, SSB, and RTTY. We worked 75 sections missing only Maine, Northern New York, Virgin Islands, Maritime Province, and Newfoundland. Including bonus points, we had a score of 4,050 points. More important than just points, all those who attended had a great time. Dan has said he is willing to host it again next year.

Dan had two rooms available for our use. One was his usual shack while the other was Virginia’s project room. Both rooms had Icom 761s with networked computers running WriteLog. We used one room for CW and one for SSB and RTTY. When the noise from the SSB room became too great, we just closed the door. Dan’s DX collecting antennas played great throughout the Field Day operation. Club operators who kept the two transmitters on the air around the clock were Gary, K7OX, Wayne, WA1PMA, Jay, WA0WWW, George, W6AEA, and Kirk, K7EKM. Our operation drew a Montana guest Chris, KD7DBL, who after some mentoring on how to use the radios and how to work contest-type RTTY contacts made several RTTY and SSB contacts late Saturday night under the watchful eye of club call trustee K7OX. As in the five previous years, CW QSOs outnumbered SSB ones with RTTY garnering almost 100 QSOs. This year the SSB gang closed the gap on the CW operators. Maybe next year, fellas.

George W6AEA making Field Day points.

The bonus points this year were for Media Publicity (an article in the Spokane Review), for copying the W1AW Field Day Message, for sending a formal National Traffic System (NTS) message to our Section Communication Manager (SCM), for a site visit by a served agency (the Fire Department), for an educational activity (taught RTTY operating and logging with WriteLog and with MMTTY), and for submitting our results via the web. 2D stations are not eligible for all the bonus points, so we did well.

All who attended had an enjoyable time. We’ll be operating Field Day again next year, so mark your calendar now for the last full weekend in June.

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