True Stories

TCARA - Field Day Story of 2010

Sunday July 04, 2010

Story written by Bob Muller, K6ASK

Hi all,

The final tally is 449 QSOs for 1148 contact points, plus 870 bonus points, resulting in a final score of 2018 points.

Click on this graph showing our QSOs/hour rate during the 24 hours of Field Day. Color code shows which band(s) were in use at any given time.

At about the middle of the contest, my lone CW operation (with walk-around breaks) went from 600-800, 900-1140 and 1200-1230 UTC Sunday. Then I switched to 80 SSB and worked a few from 1230-1250 UTC. It was now close to 5 AM local time (6 hours to go.)

Dave awakened and wanted to operate, so he went on 40 SSB from 1320-1650 UTC. I believe I saw Steve and Charles walking around and rubbing their eyes. Somewhere in here, I took a nap.

About 1600 UTC, I woke up and decided to try 20 SSB for about 25 QSOs, and from 1650-1800 UTC I made about 40 QSOs on 15 SSB. Meanwhile, Charles was on 6 meters raking them in from 1540-1800 UTC and Steve was busy working Digital from 1420-1745 UTC. We had all three HF stations going, PLUS 6 meters. In the last 2-1/2 hours of the contest, the 4 operators made over 150 QSOs. That's a rate of 60 QSOs/hour or 1 per minute. Really blazing!! Just goes to show you what we could accomplish, if we set our minds to it.

During the previous 21-1/2 hours we made about 300 QSOs. That's an average rate of about 14 QSOs/hour or 1 per 4-1/3 minutes.

73, Bob

KEN BERGLOF, K6SRU
TCARA NEWSLETTER EDITOR