– a retrospective
When I was mostly awake in the dark on Saturday morning, I felt for my watch and found the lower-left button and pressed it once, to shift from local time to what I still often think of as Greenwich Mean Time. Next, the upper-right button to illuminate the face. Eleven-hundred something. Five hours from now, it begins. Better get started …
As in previous years I just grab my radio pack as-is, and head out the door as a nod to the emergency communications aspect of Field Day.
What with one thing and another, it was actually Starting Time ( 10 AM (1600 GMT, also known as Universal Coordinated Time, UTC)) when I actually got on the road to Wildcat Mountain State Park, and it was an hour later before I got to the park and started to set up:








Documenting my setup process in pictures was a spontaneous decision that took some extra time, but now I kind of like fleshing out the process that is usually summarized as “I set up the 17′ Buddipole vertical.”

It was a cold day with a stiff wind, so it was really good to get back into the car.


It was a few minutes before noon when I turned on the radio and opened the logbook. Propagation was good, and the band was crowded. Lots of big loud stations competing to be heard, and here’s my little 5 or 10 watt station jumping right in.
It was hard work. 13 contacts in about 4 hours, and I’m on my last cupful of hot coffee. Pick up, load up, drive home. I don’t remember what I had for dinner, but I’m pretty sure I went to bed earlier than usual.
I was up, and out, early on Sunday, in the hope that the competition might be less intense. Maybe it was, just a little. 14 contacts in 2 hours. Home in time for lunch, and now to start the logging.

Doing a pair of ADIF logs for POTA was simple, as was importing the second one into the first to make a Cabrillo log for WFD … until I looked at the output. Nothing like what the example shows, and my logging program has no way of tweaking the output. Now I remember that I had the same trouble last year, and had to handcraft the Cabrillo file, line by line, in a text editor.
I might do some updates to this post, later, but I want to get this posted now.
Thanks for visiting driftlessqrp!
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