Field Day 2002 Recap...

The last weekend of June, a couple dozen local hams and others came out to the woods to practice emergency communication skills and have a great time in the fresh air and sunshine (though it was awfully dusty after months with no rain). NADXA once again collaborated with the Coconino Amateur Radio Club to stage this year's Field Day operation. We were in a different QTH than in recent years, however, as the Forest Service had closed down access to all the national forest lands due to extreme fire danger. In fact, we could see the smoke from the 460,000-acre Rodeo-Chediski fire on the eastern horizon the whole weekend. Nonetheless, our site at Mormon Lake campground worked out quite well.

We operated under the club call sign, W7TB, in category 2A. As usual, we ran a full-time CW station and a full-time SSB station, as well another SSB station that alternated between 6 meters when that band was open and the HF bands, serving as our GOTA ("Get On The Air") station; GOTA was a new feature of FD2002.

Saturday evening was highlighted by Chef Bob's (N7FVK) renowned big barbecue, ensuring that no Field Day participants went away hungry. Several visitors stopped by during Field Day, hopefully a little more aware of Amateur Radio's capabilities for emergency communication.

And how did it all turn out once the Field Day dust had settled? Well, conditions were lousy on the HF bands (due to low solar flux and high geomagnetic activity) until about sundown Saturday, but we came close to 2000's club-record score (5926) anyway. Here's the breakdown: