Winter Field Day
2024 Winter Field Day:
A Great Success!
Jan 27-28, 2024 (Saturday 2pm - Sunday 2pm)
At Osprey Pointe Pavilion in Morse Park, Noblesville IN
For Winter Field Day 2024, Piglet Radio and Central Indiana Amateur Radio Association (CIARA) teamed up for a joint operation using the Piglet's N9BCN club callsign. Besides contest operations, we had a coax connector workshop and plenty of fun discussions and informal learning. The heated station tents were warm inside despite rainy weather in the 30s, and we enjoyed avoiding the frigid temps, ice & snow from early January!
At least 34 people attended, with 16 choosing to operate the radios and many others assisting with logging, tuning and setup or takedown.
CONTEST RESULTS:
We operated as Class "2-Oscar" (Two Transmitters, Outdoors), scoring 50,004 points from 1,794 contacts (QSOs) in 24 hours!
N9BCN reached all 50 states at least twice, with a few DX contacts to France, Ireland and England as well. Great results for our second year!
Derek N9TD was our top operator, achieving a stellar 800 QSOs! Six other operators contributed at least 100+ QSOs to the club total: AC9XK, K9XL, KD9TQH, W9CZK, K9QL, and KC9P.
ACTIVITIES:
HF Contest Operations: Technicians and unlicensed people are welcome to stop by and get on the air on the HF bands with us! We will be operating for all 24 hours of the contest. Members and guests may stop by anytime to hang out, observe, ask questions or participate on the air.
DIY Coax Connector Building Workshop: 4 pm on Saturday. $10 donation for materials.
Sell/Swap/Giveaway Table: Bring any gear you want to sell, trade or give away!
STATION EQUIPMENT:
We are operating two 100 watt HF (a.k.a. "shortwave") stations outdoors in heated tents and a satellite/VHF/UHF station indoors.
HF Station 1: Yaesu DX-10 transceiver with a 135 ft doublet
HF Station 2: Yaesu DX-10 transceiver with a BuddiHex 20-6m directional hexbeam antenna and 80-10m Wolf River Coil vertical antenna.
Satellite/VHF/UHF Station: Icom 9700 transceiver with an M2 LEO VHF/UHF stacked Yagi antenna, Yaesu G-5500 motorized az/el controller, CSN Technologies S.A.T. server and a Diamond X50A antenna on a 20 foot mast.
We covered the continent with the sweet sound of "November Nine Bravo Charlie November"! (Click map to see full QSO map with Hawaii, Alaska and international contacts.)