Winter Field Day is an annual event occurring every January (last full weekend) and provides the amateur radio community with more radio fun. This year was no exception. Word got out and people came to see. Attendance was brisk and all who came benefited from the time spent. The entire range of license classes were there, which allowed for those contesting full rights of the Extra Class portions of the bands. The venue was at the Welsh Mountain Community Park Center and it served as a useful site for all the activities in play.
Workshops
There were hands-on workshops with various people involved:
- ARES Meeting (photo below) – Again, attendance was tremendous. Topics of discussion included a recap of the 2022 activities, discussion about the importance of the task books, plans for 2023 events and a discussion of training ideas for the future.
- Antenna Building Hands-On Topics – Part of the excitement of the hobby is in being able to create ones own equipment, including effective antennas from scratch:
- Tape Measure Yagi – This type of antenna serves as the ideal handheld antenna for satellite communications (outdoor demonstration by Alex Van Patten), radio direction finding and even for simple 2m communications.
- Roll-up J-Pole Antenna (photo below) – This is a single-band antenna that allows for quick and flexible deployment in the field.
- End-fed HF Antenna – This is a simple wire antenna designed and tuned for specific bands and is available for flexible deployment in the field. This is dedicated to the HF bands.
Radio Contesting
Another highlight of this event is the obvious goal of any field day, to reach out and make contacts (photos below). Our club was established as a ‘4I’ (four simultaneous stations, Indoor) entity for the duration of the contest. We contacted, we logged, we socialized and enjoyed every minute of it. Modes were single-sideband and CW.
Feedback – Here’s a sampling of the feedback received:
I can’t thank you and the RRR group enough for the fun I had this past weekend. Rob allowing me to continue on his rig after he left was HUGE! Thank you so much and I truly do look forward to next year and helping out in anyway I can. I do hope to be able to have a CW station up and running like Alex…
N3YLI – Travis
Being my first field day EVER, the fact that y’all opened up to outsiders was huge and I greatly appreciate that. The food was fantabulous! Especially Doug’s Scrapple sandwich. I also really enjoyed the building aspect of things. I was one who participated in the End Fed Antenna that Jason was running…
Food and Fellowship
As much as there’s the contest underway, this also serves as an opportunity for the area amateur radio community to simply get together, talk, relax, share ideas and enjoy food. Meals were served and people stayed for longer than they originally planned.
All images courtesy of:
Robert R. Devonshire, Jr.
PHOTO-5 Imagery
(717) 475-8172 (cell)
2022 Winter Field Day
WOW! So it came, we played and its gone! What a blast. Winter Field day 2022 was held at the Welsh Mountain Community center in Beautiful New Holland. W3COB (Doug) and KB3PBV (Ed) held an ARES meeting and a table top exercise with 12 participants in person and 7 on zoom. A station was set up for anyone who wanted to build their own 2 meter Yagi antenna. 5 were built during the weekend. Good food was enjoyed all weekend and the super cold and snow didn’t win the day!