Field Day at Mt. Kearsarge
June 2014
Dave Benson K1SWL and I did Field Day at Winslow State Park
part way up Mt. Kearsarge. We only operated for 3 hours, but we
had a fantastic time and worked stations in Washington, Oregon,
California and New Mexico among many others.
Our view was the best!
We met at 11:00 am at the gas station in Wilmot Flats. Then we
headed up the Kearsarge
Valley Road toward the mountain. We weren't sure what to expect...
but we really
lucked out. We had a spot all to ourselves at the end of a small
field. We had suitable
antenna trees on all sides, and hardly any bugs. A slight breeze
kept us cool most of
the time.
I put up an inverted L with 65 feet of wire. It went up about 30
feet and then over.
I used the earchi.org 9:1 unun. The KX3 tuned perfectly on 15
meters.
Dave used a K2 with a resonant 20 meter dipole up about 35 feet. He
fed it with coax and
didn't need a tuner.
We operated with solar charged batteries using Dave's call (K1SWL)
as 2B battery.
Remarkably, we didn't interfere with each other at all. A few keying
remnants was all I
could hear. Dave got a very slight bit of hash now and then.
Here's Dave testing his setup before the 2:00 pm gun.
We feasted on freshly picked strawberries and cookies in between
contacts.
(thanks Judy!) It seemed to us that activity was down this year, but
maybe
it was just band conditions.
I started out using 9 AA cells with the KX3 at three watts. I didn't
have any trouble
making QSOs with this setup. I just wanted to see how it would work
in a competitive
environment. After 30 Qs, I switched up to five watts and a LiPo
battery.
The park closes at 6:00 pm and we started packing up shortly after
5:00. (We'd had
enough... How do these kids go all day and half the night?) Thanks
for all the Qs...
see you next year.