Our yearly tradition continues....

Camper Cabin #3 at Hayes Lake State Park

Burgers on the grill for a couple of meals

Ben eating lunch on Saturday inside the screen porch of the cabin.

Our operating position inside the screen porch

The Arduino PS2 keyboard keyer (NG0R design)

Ben and I have been operating Field Day together last few years since he got his license. Sometimes we operate with a club in the typical 2A, 3A, 4A format and sometimes we operation 1B with just the two of us from a camping location.

This year we rented a camper cabin at Hayes Lake State Park near Roseau, MN. That is about 300 miles north of our home. The small cabin makes the trip low risk should we run into weather issues like storms or cold weather. The cabin had a screened porch so that made the bugs a low risk issue which was critical given our location.

We used our KX3, a homebrew Arduino PS2 keyboard keyer, paper logging, a 40m dipole, and a random wire antenna. It was a semi-minimalist approach since we were operation a 1B-Battery station again this year.

Our Q count was down this year compared to last year. It also felt like we worked much harder to make the Q's and we put in a LOT more time. The bands were great Friday night be the event started. The bands were poor on Saturday. The bands were decent Sunday morning but we ended early as rain moved in and we wanted to pack up the car before things got too wet outside.

Last year we had about 102 Qs which were primarily CW.

For 2013 we had 62 Q's

While we did not have a ton of Q's in the log we pushed some new areas for us.

It was much more minimalist compared to previous years
We were setup with time to spare
We even got to take a nap prior to the event starting
We used a cabin for op position
This was our first major outing with the KX3
We used a homebrew Arduino PS2 keyboard keyer
We used paper logging

The event was fun. We are already working on changes & enhancements to our plan for next year.

73 de NG0R