Field Day 2023 was once again held at the Johnston Outpost YMCA, and the air-conditioned location was a big success: the club was able to keep all 3 radios in operation for the entire event! As other clubs wound down their operations, operators came to visit our site late at night on Saturday and early Sunday morning, providing welcome support. We managed to bag Maryland a few times on Sunday morning, but the San Joaquin Valley eluded us this year.
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ARRL Field Day is the single most popular HAM Radio on-the-air event held annually in the US and Canada and is open to all FCC license classes. On the fourth weekend of June of each year, more than 35,000 amateur radio operators gather with their clubs, groups or simply with friends and family to operate from remote locations or their home. Field Day is a picnic, a campout, practice for emergencies, an informal contest and, most of all, FUN! This year the DARC will host an in-person event at the Johnston Outpost YMCA in Farmers Branch. The festivities and event officially start at 1pm central time June 24, 2023 but the W5FC DARC crew in true fashion will be there early at 9am Sat June 24, 2023 for setup. The DARC will be operating as 3A (Three Alpha) (section NTX) and will have 3 radios on the air during the event. Come join in the fun! Additional event/agenda details below.
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Field Day 2022 was a great event, from the well-prepared set-up to the well-orchestrated, fast take-down. As Randy, KE5JIT, pointed out, a 55-minute “strike” is clearly a record for the DARC. While the Field Day committee works on the final entry, please enjoy some fun facts and numbers about our Field Day contacts.
I’m proud to say that team “TM” did a great job making contacts! It was only on Sunday morning that Travis McWaters, KI5PGM, pointed out to me that he was using the same initials that I, Tony Mendina, NT5TM, used. Travis made many more contacts than I did.
At least 20 of the 51 people who visited our site made at least one contact on the air. (Not everyone entered their information into the logging software.)
Details about our contacts are below.
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ARRL Field Day is the single most popular HAM Radio on-the-air event held annually in the US and Canada and is open to all FCC license classes. On the fourth weekend of June of each year, more than 35,000 radio amateur operators gather with their clubs, groups or simply with friends and family to operate from remote locations. Field Day is a picnic, a campout, practice for emergencies, an informal contest and, most of all, FUN! This year the DARC will host an in-person event at the Johnston Outpost YMCA in Farmers Branch. The festivities and event officially start at 1pm central time June 25, 2022 but the DARC crew in true fashion will be there early at 9am for setup. The DARC will be operating as 3A (Three Alpha) (section NTX) and will have 3 radios on the air during the event. Come join in the fun! Additional event/agenda details below.
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ARRL Field Day is the single most popular on-the-air event held annually in the US and Canada and is open to all license classes. On the fourth weekend of June of each year, more than 35,000 radio amateurs gather with their clubs, groups or simply with friends and family to operate from remote locations. Field Day is a picnic, a campout, practice for emergencies, an informal contest and, most of all, FUN! However, due to the on-going COVID pandemic the DARC/W5FC will NOT be hosting a club/group event for 2021. Instead, in accordance with the ARRL guide lines for 2021 you can work as an individual station such as a 1D NTX, or 1E NTX and have your individual score count towards the DARC club score. We hope that you will participate as this is such a fun event and the more stations on the air the more fun it will be. Stay tuned in on this web frequency we will have more information coming – or drop in on DARC Discord Channel and say hello and join the Discord DARC Field Day 2021 channel for even more interaction, fun and giveaways.
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Join the DARC for Lecture and Lab May 22, 2021 from 11am until 2/3pm Central Time virtually via Google Meet. (The virtual meeting ID/Link is always on the W5FC event calendar) During this lecture and Lab, we’ll be helping all participants learn how to use the free QRUQSP.org Field Day logger. This is an online logging system designed for Field Day and Winter Field Day and all you need is an internet connection and any device with a web browser with access to the https://qruqsp.org site.
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The COVID-19 pandemic-modified ARRL Field Day rules from 2020 will continue this June with the addition of a power limit imposed on Class D (Home Stations) and Class E (Home Stations-Emergency Power) participants. The news from the ARRL Board’s Programs and Services Committee comes as many clubs and groups are starting preparations for Field Day in earnest. Field Day 2021 will take place June 26 – 27.
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This year the DARC participated in ARRL Field Day 2019. The Club ran as 3A with 580 QSOs and participated for the allowed 24 hours. Check out the video below to see what ARRL Field Day is all about. (special thanks to Andrei N5ABA for the video production)
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We’ll have more details about our Field Day success in the next newsletter, but for now…here’s a quick report on our contacts. While we still haven’t returned to the glory days of having actual sunspots on a reliable basis, we made 34% more contacts than last year. We got plenty of contacts, including more than 200 at two stations (one VHF, one HF) powered by solar-charged batteries.
We worked all 50 states and every ARRL section! More details are below.
For the full story about our 2018 Field Day effort, you’ll have to wait for the newsletter. But if you just want to see how many contacts you made, or which ARRL sections we worked from up on the hill, the statistics from our logging program are below. I’m not sure who “JWB” is, but KG5EIU got plenty of contacts for us! He and our club president, Bill KF5ZBL, even made sure that their transmitter was powered by a solar-powered battery, earning us more points.
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