Winter Field Day 2023

After a two-year absence due to Covid, NSARC’s Winter Field Day station VE7NSR was operated at Igor VE7AXO and Lois’s house. All of the participants thanked Lois and Igor’s hospitality and warmth. His graceful hospitality at his house included,
• Access to a warm washroom
• Hot coffee and
• Access to a warm “lounge” (the TV room) to sit and keep warm between operating shifts.

We welcomed our new FD Coordinator Darcey VA7DKY. We started our set up on Friday at 1100PST under the command of Nick VA7NRM, our club’s valuable rig/antenna expert. Friday was almost fully dedicated to antenna erections, a dipole for 40/15m bands (Nick), 20m 3-el Wire Yagi (Halden VE7UTS), 144/435MHz GP (Joe) VE7JYH, 144/220/435MHz GP (Josh VE7KZX) and 900MHz multi element Yagi (Halden). With Friday afternoon still being part of workday, the majority of setup staff was above 60 years old, with 2 ‘not-so-old’ staff. There were 549 years of experiences in total among the 8-setup staff. “Old soldiers never die; they simply DON’T vanish”. By Gen. McArthur-modified

There were 2 stations set up, HF station and V/UHF station. The HF station had the Club’s IC-7300 while V/UHF station had the Club’s IC-706MkIIIG. Halden contributed 220MHz and 900MHz transceivers from his shack in an effort to earn maximum Band Multiplier points in full. Both stations were set under the deck, so that participants did not have to worry about their tents being blown away, as almost happened during the 2018 WFD. All transceivers were driven by 4 Li-PO3 batteries kindly brought by our 4 club members, and Halden is the chief battery officer among other tasks.

After a busy morning setup, at 1100PST, the WFD2023 kicked off. The first hour was operated by Erica VA7QER with Halden helping to log QSOs. During the second hour, Halden was busy getting contact/band points on 144/220/435 and 900MHz bands. Towards late afternoon the highlight was Jan VE7EE on the 20m band. His powerful voice dominated the whole VE7NSR for a while. It was unofficially decided that our future Field Day TRX will be model VE7EE and the only one antenna to go with will be a big hand-made megaphone! Saturday QSO was shut down at about 1800PST after participants on the air has decreased and the bands became quiet.