Field Day 2023

TVDXA · ARRL Field Day 2023 · N4LT · Class 3A TN

The Tennessee Valley DX Association again conducted its annual ARRL Field Day operation at the Highway 58 Volunteer Fire Department's Training Facility on Snow Hill Road at Mahan Gap, near Ooltewah. We have been holding Field Day at this location since 2016.

Since many of the large trees around the property had been cut down in the last year, this year was a new challenge to find ways of getting the three antennas needed for our stations into the air at a reasonable height. A small group of die-hard "antenna specialists" met at the site on the Thursday before Field Day to put ropes in strategic places in order to pull up the antennas. On Friday this group, which had grown a bit larger, returned and put up two of the three antennas.

Saturday morning, the third antenna required installing a temporary mast — provided by Greg Gregory — in the "front yard." This mast anchored one end of the 80m dipole used by Bill W4XK's Icom 7300. After a stimulating breakfast at the local Cracker Barrel, everyone met at the Field Day site for final preparations before the 2:00 PM start.

The Visitors Log shows that we had 47 people, including participants, visit our site during the Field Day event. Again this year we used our club call sign, N4LT, in honor of Dick Wilson, who was always an enthusiastic Field Day participant.

We participated in ARRL Class 3A, which is for clubs or groups who have a maximum of three transmitters on the air at the same time, all operating on emergency power.

---

Stations & Antennas

The GOTA (Get On The Air) demonstration station shared an antenna with W4XK and also served as a backup for Ken's K3S, which had developed a problem. The antenna heights were generally 40 to 50 feet in the air — on the layout, the orange and yellow runs are the 40M EDZ antennas, and the red run is W4XK's 80m dipole.

Each station was computer-controlled via a laptop running N1MM Logger+ logging and networking software. All stations were networked through a local wireless router, so every logged QSO appeared on each computer. This also provided valuable information about which station was on what band and mode, avoiding having two stations accidentally land on the same band and mode at once.

All radios and computers were operated off emergency power from a 6,500-watt gasoline generator provided by Ken, K3JWI.

---

Band & Mode Summary

Band	Mode	QSOs	Points
80m	CW	91	182
80m	FT8	137	274
40m	CW	211	422
40m	FT4	1	2
40m	FT8	86	172
40m	LSB	66	66
20m	CW	345	690
20m	FT8	5	10
15m	CW	62	124
15m	FT8	28	56
15m	USB	45	45
10m	CW	10	20
10m	FT8	4	8
2m	FM	1	1
Totals		1,092	2,072

This year we made a concerted effort to maximize our bonus points. Several individuals took on responsibility for specific bonus points, and thanks to the efforts of Howard, Paul, Dennis, Peter, Karen, Gary, Corey, and Nancy Pagano, our estimated bonus total reached 1,430 points — way up from the 850 bonus points earned the previous year. Way to go, gang!

We worked all 50 states and 9 DXCC entities. We also worked 78 of the 84 ARRL/RAC sections, missing only MB, NB, NL, PEI, SK, and Northern Territories (NT).

Photo highlights from the weekend: Paul and Howard ready for Field Day; Corey at work making QSOs; and Karen teaching us about satellites. See the full photo gallery →

---

TVDXA Field Day Activity & Scores

FIELD DAY WAS A LOT OF FUN!  (See you next year?)  73!

---