Boschveldt (W3BQC) Field Day 2017

Once again, I joined my fellow Boschveldt QRP Club members for Field Day. We’re a loosely-organized group of QRPers who enjoy portable operating. Field Day is one of the few times each year that we get together, so it’s always good to see everyone and do some catching up. This year we held Field Day on a beautiful piece of land owned by a close family friend of one of our members. We were situated on top of a hill, so we had some good elevation, too.

Ed K3YTR, Glen NK1N and I arrived mid-afternoon on Friday and set up our tents. We were expecting some heavy rains from the remnants of Tropical Storm Cindy so we held off setting up our radio equipment. We were joined later that night by Ron WA8YIH.

We sat around chewing the fat until it started to rain around 10:30 PM. At that point, we retreated to our tents for the night to ride out the storm. It certainly was a rough night, with some of the heaviest rain I have ever experienced in a tent. My old tent made it through the night with only some slight leaks. WA8YIH’s canopy, unfortunately, was destroyed by the heavy rain. Other than that, we got through the night otherwise unscathed.

After breakfast on Saturday, we went about setting up our radio equipment. Ed WA3WSJ arrived mid-morning.

This year, we operating as Class 3A EPA, using our club callsign, W3BQC. We were all QRP on battery power. I operated CW while WA8YIH operated SSB, digital and a little CW. NK1N worked satellites using his new portable setup. K3YTR worked 2M and 440 SSB. WA3WSJ assisted with all the stations.

On HF, WA8YIH and I were both running KX3s and inverted L antennas fed through 9:1 ununs. Propagation seemed fair on Saturday but was much better on Sunday. Despite all the wet foliage around us, NK1N managed to make some decent satellite contacts. On Saturday night, I switched my station over to digital to copy the W1AW Field Day Bulletin on 80 meters.

Field Day with the Boschveldt QRP crew is always a somewhat laid-back affair. None of us are serious contesters, so there is always a lot of socializing going on during the weekend. During the evening, we assemble around the campfire to swap tall stories. We never rack up huge scores but we always have a lot of fun.

After a Sunday lunch of grilled Spam sandwiches, we started tearing down and packing up. We haven’t compiled our logs yet, so I don’t know what our final score is yet. I’m sure we didn’t set any records but, if they gave out bonus points for having fun, the Boschveldt crew would be at the top of our category.

For more (and much better) pictures of our Field Day, visit the Boschveldt QRP website.

72, Craig WB3GCK