By Chip Coker KD4C
Field Day 2022 is a wrap! RWK had a great event this year. Almost 60 members and guests came to the Richardson EOC to help set up, raise the tower, operate, log, eat really good pizza, build dual-band antennas, roll up coax and help put stuff away. Jon is still tallying the final score but we completed somewhere around 450 QSOs over the 8 hours of operating. Not bad for “disturbed” band conditions.
I was happy for the great turnout, and very happy to see so many new members helping and operating (including a few that stayed the entire day). I was also happy to see a bunch of operators on the CW station that were not NN5T – hopefully we have some new CW fans in RWK. Although the band conditions weren’t the best, all the stations were continuously manned and no one gave up. We made good progress on all stations throughout the day until it was time to drop the tower at nightfall.
Thanks to Andrew KE5GDB, who rolled in with his mobile satellite station. People watched as he completed around ten QSOs on several different LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellite passes, including a couple through the ISS and one with an astronaut on board the ISS – truly DX! The group were impressed watching the trailer-hitch mounted antennas automatically tracking the bird across the sky as the QSOs were in progress.
Bob KG5WRY’s antenna build was a hit, with 16 or so different lucky hams walking out with a new “Ed Fong” dual-band UHF/VHF antenna that they cut/soldered/assembled themselves. Along the way, they hopefully learned the magic behind the design.
Along the way we had some good pizza, good ham fellowship, and of course it wouldn’t be field day without Grant W5XJ at the dryboard with an impromptu tutoring session.
Thanks to all that helped set up and tear down – we had plenty of help and that makes the work so much better. We also had a good bunch of operators and loggers – there were plenty of opportunities to get on the air. Special thanks to Jon NN5T for his detailed antenna plans and two new antennas this year, and for Don N5SKT and his digital station, and also for Andrew KE5GDB for bringing and operating the mobile satellite station.
A huge thanks to our City of Richardson EOC Hosts (all of which are hams!) – Scott Greeson KG5MKC, Kevin Sims KD5YVL, and Matt LaMunion, KG5VIX. They went out of their way to make sure we had whatever we needed to make it a successful event. I also want to thank everyone that respected the Richardson EOC facility and our City of Richardson hosts – we didn’t make a big mess and we left the host facility much like we arrived, which was my goal.
RWK ended up 19th in Class 3F.
Here are a few pics from Field Day 2022. Michael WT9V has assembled a much bigger assortment of 250+ photos into a gallery on NextCloud. Click through and see who you recognize! And let’s do it again next year!
For more than 250 photos, View Field Day 2022 Gallery on NextCloud (click on gridview in upper right after page loads)
