Winter Field Day is fast approaching!!
Winter Field Day is a communications exercise, held on the last full weekend in January. To us, it is an amazing opportunity to get out into the field, practice our craft, learn from our elmers, experiment with new or different technology, have an amazing time, and build a stronger more cohesive team. The Winter Field Day Association explicitly states that their main focus is emergency communications, which fits our goals and purpose to a T!
This will be our fifth year in a row to participate and compete, although our focus is always to have fun and not necessarily to rack up points. We will be at the same park as last year, Wilson H. Fox Park on Granger lake. We will be on same loop as last year, with site 22 as the main meetup site.
This year we will be setting up the WC-ARES trailer as well as our Go Kit, but are very excited to also have LeeCARES joining us with their trailer as well for the third station. All stations will have HF, VHF, and UHF capabilities for voice, digi modes, and hopefully some CW. We will have plenty of room for everyone to get out there and try their hand on the air, behind the keyboard, or tapping on a key. We will gather around the camp fire at night, sharing stories and maybe even doing a some JS8Call where it is warm. Once again, we will be serving dinner Saturday night, and breakfast Sunday morning for those that would like to join.
January 28th and 29th are the competition days, with setup starting the 27th. The first version of the event plan is attached. It has a photo of the sites we have reserved, and the rules attached on the end, along with most of the normal stuff. We are going to be operating lean ICS this go around, with more focus on team building, having fun, and scoring some points. Even if you can only come for an hour, we welcome you to come say hello and bring your friends and family that are interested in emcomm or radio in general.
We still need a few volunteers for the following areas:
Food Coordinator – Organizing the dinner and breakfast.
Someone to make a satellite contact. Make one satellite contact and generate the points equivalent of 500 voice contacts! Last year we were able to accomplish this and it really was one of the highlights of the day.
If you would like to help us out doing one of these things, please follow the link below and sign up (CW operators and satellite are not on here).