Winter Field Day 2024

Winter Field Day 2024 is in the (log)books.

The plan this year again involved the Mojave National Preserve (K-0650), but no camping. Instead, I opted to stay in a nearby hotel to avoid the cold and guarantee some rest. I also extended the trip by one day to avoid the early-morning rush to the park to get set up on the first morning.

Leaving first thing on Friday morning, I headed up towards the Preserve, stopping briefly to check in to the hotel and eat some lunch at the local diner. The hotel is located in a small town consisting of two gas stations, the hotel and diner, and a Dairy Queen. The diner food was good, the DQ closed at 7pm, and the hotel was horrible.

In the afternoon I headed into the park to claim my spot for the remainder of the weekend. Unlike last year where I operated from a park campsite, I chose to find something a little more secluded this year. The Preserve has a network of backroads and off-road trails that allow camping in previously disturbed locations. I had taken a scouting trip in the weeks before and noted several radio-friendly sites that were sufficiently large, out of the way of other visitors and not obstructed by close hills or mountains. The spot I ended up at was just about perfect and I spent the afternoon and evening making POTA CW and SSB contacts with the Yaesu FT-710 Chelegance MC-750 vertical, leaving shortly after sunset and returning Ludlow for some food and “rest”.

It turns out that in Ludlow, the trains run nearly all night and the tracks are right next to the Hotel. That, combined with the constant air-brakes of the trucks stopping at the gas station and the non-functioning heater made for a rough night’s sleep. I woke up early, grabbed good diner breakfast next door, and headed into the park to be ready for the start of Winter Field Day at 11AM local time.

As expected, no one had moved into my spot overnight, and I was able to set up in the same location as the prior day. The plan for this day was to set up the full mast and operate using the linked EFHW that I had built a few weeks earlier. I set up the station and made a few POTA contacts before Field Day started.

Unfortunately, as the day went on the winds picked up considerably (typical for this area) and I had to re-orient the car and shade structure a few times to make things bearable. Eventually I had to ditch the shade tent altogether as the wind was threatening to rip it all apart. It was good test of the mast and guy setup, though, and everything worked perfectly in the wind.

Over the course of the day, I was able to get quite a few SSB contacts in the log, mostly hunting and pouncing rather than calling CQ and running my own frequency. While I was able to get a few CW contacts in the log, I realized that I still have a ways to go before my copying abilities catch up to a busy situation like WFD.

For logging, I opted to use the (excellent) N3FJP Winter Field Day Logging application on my ancient Thinkpad, which boasts a 14+ hour runtime due to the dual battery setup.

I ended up operating from about 10AM (POTA contacts until WFD started at 11AM) until nearly 5PM on a number of different bands, all of which I could easily configure with my custom linked antenna.

Not wanting a repeat of the previous night, I opted to ditch my reservation for the night at the Ludlow Hotel and head the other direction to Needles, CA along the Colorado River on the border of California and Arizona. I had no problem finding a much better hotel situation and was able to get a decent night’s sleep!

The next morning, I packed up and decided to head to a different park. On it’s southern edge, the Mojave Preserve butts up against the newly created (2016) Mojave Trails National Monument (K-4543) and I hoped I could find an appropriate place to activate the park and finish off the remaining few hours of Winter Field Day. I ended up finding an empty dirt road a short distance from the “town” of Amboy, CA that made a good location to set up and guaranteed little to no other traffic!

This time, I set up the Chelegance MC-750 for a few contacts, but eventually settled on the mast and the linked EFHW and had great luck making contacts across the country. On 40 meters I was even able to make an NVIS contact to my Dad roughly 125 miles to the west. I wrapped up the day with a few more POTA contacts, packed it all up and headed home.

Altogether I managed to make 42 WFD contacts, as well as some additional POTA contacts on either end of the start/finish of the event. I believe it was a little less than last year, but I attribute that to the amount of time I spent trying to decipher callsigns and the WFD exchange in CW. I’m sure I’ll do better next year.

During the event I able to meet a number of the WFD Objectives, including operating away from home, operating 100% QRP power (5 watts CW, 10 watts SSB), using entirely alternative energy (batteries), deploying multiple antennas, and operating for more than 6 consecutive hours.

The QSO map below shows all of the contacts made during the weekend, including the POTA and WFD contacts. Green markers are SSB, Red markers are CW.