[3830] ARRL FD K0EU 1B LP

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                    ARRL Field Day - 2022

Call: K0EU
Operator(s): K0EU W0CO
Station: K0EU

Class: 1B LP
QTH: CO
Operating Time (hrs): 23

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  Dig Qs
----------------------------
  160:                   
   80:                   
   40:   609    30       
   20:   725     3       
   15:   274             
   10:                   
    6:                   
    2:                   
  222:                   
  432:                   
  903:                   
  1.2:                   
  2.3:                   
  3.4:                   
  5.7:                   
  10G:                   
  24G:                   
----------------------------
Total:  1608    33      0  Total Score = 7,348

Club: Grand Mesa Contesters of Colorado

Comments:

Total Score includes QSO points plus 850 bonus points.

Brad (W0CO) invited me (K0EU) to join him as his good friend Mike Wells (W0FD)
had just undergone surgery and couldn't participate this year. We used the same
setup that Mike and Brad had used two years ago. Unfortunately for us, this time
the 58 foot mast failed as we were raising the wire antennas. Luckily, only one
section of the mast bent, and we reconfigured it to 48 feet.

Propagation was OK, but not excellent. Better than what you would expect with a
K index of 5.  20 and 40 meter contacts made up most of our score. I'm sure we
would have done better if the feedline for our 80M vertical hadn't failed. Rates
on 40 CW went down to almost nothing around 4 AM. 40 SSB didn't bear much fruit.
With no place else to go, we took an hour off. Sunday morning brought a much
needed sporadic E opening on 15 meters, which produced 274 contacts in just over
three hours.

In addition to the mast bending and the 80M antenna being unusable, we had a few
more visits from Murphy. Brad struggled for several hours Friday evening, trying
to get WinKey working with no success. We were both dog tired, so we gave it up
and went to bed. When we tested things Saturday morning, WinKey was working
perfectly! Go figure. The K-3 tranceiver that I brought which was working fine
Friday eveing suddenly started dropping its power output. First to 50 watts, and
eventually to 5 watts. Thankfully this happened before field day started. Brad
had a Flex 6600 as our backup (I was hesitant to use a rig with no knobs and no
prior experience so we went with the K-3 first). Brad got the 6600 hooked up and
working without a hitch.

I must admit that I found the receiver on the 6600 to be better than the K-3.
When there were several stations calling, all at roughly the same strength, I
felt I could discern individual signals better. Also, it seems to have a lower
noise floor. I didn't get along very well with the interface software, mostly
because it was baptism by fire. I had to wake Brad up a few times to help fix
things I had inadvertently broken. One frustrating behavior was that the 6600
would occasionally get stuck in Tx mode, for no apparent reason. A few times,
just sending a "dit" on the paddle would put it back in receive mode.
However, there were half a dozen times for which a complete reboot of the radio
was the only solution.

We were blessed with good weather all during field day. It did get very windy on
Saturday night, but no damage was done. Murphy got in one last punch, though. A
wall of rain and wind arrived about 15 minutes before we had everything packed
up. When we finally drove out we were both soaked and chilled to the bone. The
dirt road home had turned to mud, and Brad did a great job pulling the trailer
back to civilization while it slid back and forth. He said "That should be
worth another 500 bonus points". 

I like the rule change to maximum 100 watts for every entrant. It makes for room
on the bands. I am concerned that the rule change allowing D to D contacts will
shrink the number of "in the field" operations. We won't know until
the results are published.

Antennas were collinear dipoles, tribander yagi and a 40/20m fan dipole running
E-W to cover Washington and Texas.  Power system for the station is 100% solar
with battery storage; no generators were used. The field day site is roughly 10
miles south of Gunnison Colorado on a ridge with unobstructed views.

I want to express my sincere gratitude to Brad, who did all of the preparation
work for this effort. All I had to do is show up Friday at noon and help put up
the antennas.

73 and thanks for the Q's.
It was a lot of hard work, but we had a blast.

Randy K0EU (aka Ken)
Brad W0CO


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