SPAR Winter Field Day

SPAR

The Society for the Preservation of Amateur Radio (SPAR) host Winter Field Day!

Not only during Field Day in June, do the bands come alive with improvised signals proving the ability to respond to emergencies. Since emergencies and natural disasters don't always happen in the summer, during Winter Field Day, frigid winds, icy limbs and bitter cold replace the thunderstorms and blistering heat of summer. In 2007 SPAR established a Winter Field Day event and invited all Amateur Radio operators to participate. For more general information regarding SPAR and the Winter Field Day event, visit their website at http://www.spar-hams.org/

VE4MEC Participation

2012 - 1st Field Day Event

Darcy VE4DDW was the first to participate in Winter FD using the club station callsign in 2012. He operated as a 1O category (single op, outdoor) from a Yurt located in Riding Mountin National Park. Conditions were quite good on 20m daytime using the G5RV style antenna. Everything had to be packed in on a sled and pulled through the deep snow for about 250m.

VE4MEC ended up in FIRST place in the category, with a score of 3222. Contrats!

2013 - 2nd Field Day Event

With the success of the first year behind us, it was decided to expand a little bit larger and have more members attend. Since we already have a good relationship with the property owner for the ARRL Field Day site we decided that would be the perfect place.

Darcy VE4DDW and Richard VE4KAZ spent some time digging the 5th wheel out of the snow and towing it to the site. Of course as luck would have it the wind was gusting to 50km/h on Saturday near 11:00am as we started setup. After almost an hour of throwing, Gord VE4GLS was able to heave the line over some trees and get the dipole up and on the air. We used the G5RV, hoping to have time for a full size 80m dipole later in the day, but it just didn't happen.

We used Darcy's trusted Kenwood TS-50 with autotuner and started firing well on 20m right away. As darkness arrived we tried 40m but not many stations seemed interested. We did however, get a single PSK contact for a multiplier. With little FD activity on the low bands we slept well, and got back on for about 2 hours on Sunday to finish things off.

It was great to have Glen VE4GWN and Rosi VE4YYL out on Satuday afternoon for a nice visit and some much needed snacks. Street meat (hot dogs) were as good as it got! Both Richard and Glen were pushed into the operator seat and did a great job grabbing contacts on 20.

Take down happened very quickly Sunday morning, and left us waiting for the next event! Many thanks to everyone for all the help putting this event together. We all had a great time!

Final count was 247 contacts for a claimed score of 4729


Get free Dreamweaver templates and extensions at JustDreamweaver.com