Anemoi Incident Response participated in the ARRL Field Day 2023 on June 24th and 25th. The event started at 1pm (CST) 1800 UTC. Anemoi received a special call sign of W9D that was used during this event. Below is a summary of the weekend event.

Volunteers set up radios and antennas for field day. The radios used were a Kenwood 140S, Yaesu 857D, and a Yaesu 891. Antennas used were a Alpha FMJ, Hustler 5 BTV, and a vertical dipole.

The Good, Bad, and Ugly

The Bad

The bands, 20m, 40m, 10m, and 15m, were not very good. Making contacts was very difficult with the conditions of the bands. This took a lot of work to even make a contact. In four hours approximately 15 contacts were complete.

The Ugly

At the start of field day, the 891 radio was not working properly, we could not make a contact anywhere and had to isolate the problem. The radio was checked using two antennas and still no contacts. The antennas were analyzed for SWR and checked with another radio, the antennas were all good. Finally after two hours of troubleshooting, it was determined that the antenna tuner went bad. With the tuner issues, it was decided not to use the 891 radio and time to move on try to make contacts with the other two radios.

There was also an issue with the Alpha antenna as the SWR was very high for 20m, 40m, and 80m. It was determined this was a grounding issue and could not be solved with the amount of time remaining in the day. The antenna was grounded with a ground stake, but this still proved high SWR on 20, 40 and 80m. This antenna was taken out of the picture and only used for 10m and 15m, however bad conditions did not cooperate as well. It was decided to not use this antenna. Further testing will be done to determine the SWR issue for future use.

The Good

Even with the issues, a total of 50 contacts were made during the weekend. Operating time on Saturday was only 4 hours, this was due to the issues, the heat, and weather conditions approaching the area. Out of the three antennas, the workhorse for the day was the vertical dipole antenna up about 24ft, using the Kenwood 140S and 857D radios.

Sunday was the better of the days to operate on 20m using the 5 BTV antenna and 857D radio. Both the radio and antenna worked as usual and contacts were made, even though the band conditions only improved slightly. At noon on Sunday, we ended the event on both high and lows.

Even with the issues with equipment, antennas, and band conditions, this was a learning experience for in field communications. After all field day is not all about making contacts, troubleshooting equipment and learning from what works and what does not is part of this event.

Some may say we had a bad field day because of the amount of contacts, I say it was successful in every aspect of what field day is all about.

Anemoi Incident Response looks forward to participating in Field Day 2024.