The kids’ action for Field Day was probably the most impressive. They were running CQ pileups on 40M.
They had 199 contacts. It was fun to watch and hear.  AND hats off to the HAM’s who worked the kids, they had amazing patience.

We were planning to be a 4A station this year, but we had a key individual drop late in the schedule and the weather was another reason, they were forecasting 93⁰ and 38% chance of thunderstorms. So, we reverted back to last year’s 3A configuration. That meant 1 less tower to be raised.

Our weather turned out to not be as hot as predicted but it was a wet field day.  Not just from rain, over night the security team had a rude awaking at around 3AM as the sprinkler system came on.  We had 2 tents positioned over 2 sprinkler heads and yes these were the tents the security team had decided to sleep in.  No damage other than lack of sleep.

Kids had a great time with the FOX Hunt.  They wanted to do it again on Sunday different location of course.

Field Day teardown is always faster than the setup and always under the threat of thunderstorms arriving later.  The Kids also participated in teardown.

Yea Yea, but how did we do it?

We had 20 operators at Field Day, the same as last year, and had 142 fewer contacts from last year, BUT because of the kids, we outscored 2023 Field Day by 552 points.  We had all ARRL SECTIONS except East Bay, California & Southern New Jersey (GOTA got SNJ).  We achieved our goal of field day being a learning experience (like don’t put the tents on the sprinklers)

Fun Facts 😉:

• John Halbert (W1SMN) had the most contacts @ 215 and the most points at 215. Jack (WM0G) had second with 169 contacts but third in points.
• Matt Seaver AC1NB came in second in points, with 104 contact and 208 points (FT8 & FT4)
• The best per hour was W1TKO, with 52 contacts in an hour!!!!  Outstanding
• Peter KC1FNF had both the First Contact and the Last Contact.
• The first contact was Australia by Matt, AC1NB
  Second furthest was New Zealand by Peter, KC1FNF

We only had 24 CW Contacts. We need more CW operators to come out to man a position. It’s worth 2 points for each CW contact. We made no contacts on 80M.

We had 32 calls that were not counted as contacts; 10 were Duplicates. That means we had 22 bad calls where the database failed to list Class, Section, or both. All were FT8, and it was because the other station was not set up for Field Day. Overall, we had 5,852 points for our 2024 score.

We received a $20 donation from Norm Jackson (W1CIP). [email protected]  So, if you should see him please thank him.

Bonuses:

• Social Media: 100 bonus points – Thank you John
• Media Publicity: 100 bonus points –  Thank you John and team
• Public Location: 100 bonus points
• Set up at Hudson Memorial School
• Public Information Table: 100 bonus points – Thank you, Brian for the INFO boards
• W1AW Bulletin: 100 bonus points – Thank you, Dave (copied as CW)
• Educational activity bonus: 100- bonus points – Thank you, Elaina & Frank
• Site Visitation by a representative of an agency: 100-point bonus – Thank you Frank’s Daughter Got a Fire Captain to stop by
• Safety Officer Bonus: A 100-point bonus – Thank you Lee
• Web submission: A 50-point bonus – Thank You Brian

GOTA

• Any completed contacts made by an operator at the GOTA station are worth five (5) bonus points.  We had 200 QSO’s for 1000 points
• GOTA station is supervised full-time by a GOTA Coach 100 Points, thanks you to Lee KC1HKJ and Rui W1RUI, and Brian W1XMM
• Field Day Youth Participation – A 20-point bonus (maximum of 100) for each participant age 18 or younger at your Field Day operation who completes at least one QSO.  We had eight kids all together.

We missed out on the following bonuses:

• Satellite QSO – Next year we need a Elmer to help us
• Message Origination to Section Manage – Need to set a schedule to a local ham
• Message Handling 100 points (ten messages) – Need to set a schedule to a local ham
• Alternate Power – Need a large capacity battery to make five contacts
• Site Visitation by an elected governmental official – Need to personally ask someone who is elected to stop by

Additionally, thanks are needed for the  team:

The worst thing that happened:  No, it’s not that someone got hurt.  Someone packed up the coffee pit.  Yes, with coffee and coffee grounds still in it!  I don’t drink coffee.  It reminds me of a funny story back in the Army when I was on MIDS (11 PM to 8 AM).  A sergeant told me to find something to do.  Well, the coffee pot looked really nasty.  (They later told me that it was well seasoned) and I cleaned it.  The whole GI cleaning is done with a scouring pad and Comet cleanser.  It looked brand new by the time I was done.  It seems that was the wrong thing to do, because they had to go out and buy a new coffeepot, you know a 100 cup Army sized coffeepot.   So, don’t blame me for the flavor of your coffee next year because you left me to clean it……  Did I mention that I don’t drink coffee?  -Brian

After Action Reports
2023 After Action Report.  Looking to see how well we completed previous action items.
1.    Focus on staffing and working low bands as a means of improving
readiness on those bands
2.    Recruit more CW ops
3.    Improve management of operator resources to most effective
bands / modes
4.    Increase member engagement in “educational” activities (i.e.
Satellite operation, messaging, etc)
5.    Reinforce “CTRL-O”ettiquite .
6.    Focus FT8 on bands/times with poor propagation only.
7.    Improve on how we manage the station computers–
standardization, recovery, management
8.    Increase operator knowledge of equipment
9.    Prepare more thoroughly for inclement / severe weather.
10.  Improve GOTA station experience
11.  Having a CW team leader, GOTA Leader
12.  They used mode titles for towers verse our band tents
13.  Work Satellites
14.  Get the Scouts involved

After Action Report 2024
1.    FIX POD to have WWW access
2.    Fuel pod suction system.
a.       Recommend making the pods single lines to single
generator, single point failure
3.    Have both trailers side by side to move stuff once
4.    Need to have food put in coolers rather than being left out to
possible spoil.
5.    Need to request that the sprinklers are off.
a.  Possible shut off water valve rather than just computer
control
b.       Mark the sprinklers and don’t put tents on sprinklers.
6.    Remove the small steel cable from Tower Kit’s
7.    PR / Instagram tags of field day, and or something else.
8.    Power Strips need to be RFI/EMI filtered.  6M station kept going
down and required power cycle of power supply to come back.
Some stations also complained of noise.
9.    Need a better way to have folks sign in.
10.  Need to have a better way for the GOTA station QSO’s logs.
Lost a lot of the kids hard work because of not time or
frequency on QSO’s