Winter Field Day this year is Jan 30/31. It starts Saturday, 1 PM CDT and lasts 24 hours. The event is similar to the ARRL Field Day and is growing every year. The purpose is to foster Ham camaraderie, field operation, emergency operating preparedness, and just plain on the air, outdoor fun in the midst of winter for American, Canadian, and DX Hams. This year due to COVID, individual stations can contribute their score to a club and the score will be aggregated in the WFD results. The WFD rules are at https://www.winterfieldday.
I plan to operate Winter Field Day camping at Three Rivers State Park near Sneads, Florida as a QRP station, call sign N4KGL. I will park our trailer at site 13 and have the adjacent site 11 to pitch an operating tent on. There are fellow hams camping at four other sites in the park. We all will be using our own calls and contributing our scores to the Panama City ARC. We are usually joined by Chris VA3ECO, but he is not making it down this winter, He will be roughing WFD from Ontario. Dennis WA6QKN usually joins us also, but he is dealing with health issues.
I will be using my Icom IC-705 transceiver at 5 watts on CW and 10 watts on the phone and digital modes. I have a hefty Bioenno 40 AH battery which should cover the whole event running QRP. I'll focus mostly on CW but will try for at least one contact on all bands and modes for the multiplier.I will use my Toughbook laptop for logging running N3FJP WFD software, I'll try the PSK-31 digital mode using another laptop with the Ham Radio Deluxe/DM 780 software. The antenna will be a 100 foot 26 ga wire in an inverted L configuration supported by three 31 foot Jackite poles. The antenna can be matched on the 80 through the 6-meter bands with the Icom AH-4 tuner. I am rusty on the FM amateur radio satellites, but I try will them using my Kenwood DM-710 and an Elk antenna. The ISS cross-band repeater is expected to be operational.
The weather forecast at this time is 63 degrees F and cloudy for the Saturday 1 pm start and falling to 51 degrees at midnight. Starting about 3 am, showers are expected for the rest of the event and warming back up to 70 degrees F. This is pretty mild weather so I should make it through in short pants.