Winter Field Day, 2025

– 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:

First, the tripod.
The 17 foot telescoping whip screws into the VersaTee.
Then the pole and whip go onto the tripod.
Now I tip the whole thing sideways, extend the whip, and set it back on its feet.
Release the bundle of coaxial cable and counterpoise wire, then extend the pole, section by section, until it’s about 35 feet tall. The bending of the whip shows that there was a fairly strong wind blowing.
Coax cable and the counterpoise.
A couple of years ago, I just grabbed a tangled-up EFHW made from electric-fence twine to use as a counterpoise, and it kind of partly untangled to about the perfect length, and I just continued using it because it worked.
Wedging one leg of the tripod into the wheel well is a trick I sometimes use on windy days; it seems to help, just enough. I really prefer to not use guys unless absolutely necessary.

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.”

The final decorative touch; on the WFD site map my operation was listed as “Visitors Welcome” in a public location, so I put up a poster for identification in case the antenna was insufficient.

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

Radio, battery, logbook, I’m all ready to go!
My favorite thing about the Buddipole vertical: virtually flat >2:1 SWR across the whole 20 meter band. Also one of my favorite things about the Xiegu X6100: the SWR Scan function.

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.

A typical view of the waterfall. No idea why there is no sound.

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.

Sunday was also single-digit cold, but sunny and not as windy

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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