It’s been years–over a decade, and likely closer to two!–since I’ve participated in the ARRL’s Field Day, but I’ve been thinking about entering as a solo station, or a small group operation with some friends.
I actually started the thinking by looking at the Jackery solar “generators,” which are basically a battery and AC inverter with an interface for solar recharging.1This sounds like a terribly lame sponsored post, but it’s not. I have no idea if they’re any good, and I have no affiliation with them. A dorky thing that has always bothered me is that the tonneau cover on my truck sits out in the sun all day, and is probably the size of 500W of solar panels, but it just soaks up heat and has its finish fade in the sun rather than generating electricity. That led me to thinking I’d need a fairly big battery or something to have it charge so that it would do something useful. Obviously, “why doesn’t my tonneau cover generate electricity?” leads to Field Day.
I got to looking at the rules and gaming out how a fun-centered event could still try to gain maximum points. A station powered from battery or solar and run at 5 Watts maximum gets a 5x multiplier for each QSO. An additional 100 points per transceiver are awarded if the whole operation is run on emergency power, and another 100 points each are awarded for operating in a public location and having a public information table. Add another 100 points for sending an NTS message to the ARRL section manager, another 100 points can be earned for making 5 or more contacts on alternative power, for copying the ARRL bulletin when transmitted, and for having a safety officer on-scene the whole time. (Bona fide clubs can get some additional points for social media presence.) That’s 700 free points before you’ve even made any contacts. (Well, strictly speaking, you’d need at least six QSOs to check all the boxes.) The safety officer role should be taken seriously, but it’s all good advice to follow anyway, so it’s hardly an imposition. Oh, plus there’s 50 points for submitting your logs online, and another 100 points if you make a satellite contact.
Even though I’m an Extra, I live in a condo in the city with an absolutely abysmal noise floor that makes it a major challenge to operate on HF at all. So the idea of operating from somewhere a little quieter is quite tempting. Running 5W instead of 100W may add some challenge, and the 13 dB difference is nothing to sneeze at. But it’s a great excuse to buy an IC-705, and I think there’d be a lot of satisfaction from seeing how much 5 Watts from a field can do.
The ARRL has a good reminder that it’s the control operator’s license class that dictates the station operating privileges; I’m pretty certain that decades ago I operated 15-meter phone as a Tech under the club’s Extra-class license, which was apparently not kosher. But Field Day with a General or Extra control op on hand can be a good way for Technicians to get some experience on HF. (The ARRL does caution that the control operator must be “continuously monitoring and supervising the operation at the control point of the transmitter,” but that doesn’t mean they have to be the one on the mic.)