After a year of uncertainty over the future of the old SPARs Winter Field Day event and ill health of SPAR's Board of Directors, it would appear that IT's BACK!!! A NEW group has now taken over the reins and is actively promoting this fun event. Do you like the ARRL's Field Day?? If you do, you'll likely LOVE Winter Field Day as a welcome break and fun event in the middle of the cold winter months. It's an event that you can participate in alone, with a buddy, or with a group. You can operate from home or remotely, QRP or QRO, ANY mode.. your choice. Winter Field Day 2016 will fall on Jan 30-31. There is a webpage up now, as well as a Facebook Group page you can follow for updates... http://www.winterfieldday.com/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/winterfieldday/ Hope to catch you on the bands on Winter Field Day 2016!!!
I've sent an email to small, informal club that I belong to. We have several outings a year, some indoors, and some outdoors. We also operate as a club on ARRL Field Day. It looks like a good event for us. We meet tomorrow and I hope to start a discussion. Jerry w4cdo
JP, the exchange for the Winter Field Day is the same for summer field day, that is: Callsign, Category, ARRL or RAC Section (or DX outside of US and Canada). I'm not sure how much simpler you would like it? 73, Bill VE3CLQ
Last time I played winter field day, it was something like our category, the temperature where we were operating etc... I think 3 or 4 infos were exchanged. That was , I think 3 or 4 years ago. As the contest rules were not known, it was complicated especially in CW. If its like you say now, I'd gladly take part in the WFD
Thank you Ken for posting the ad about WFD = We need all the help we can get, spreading the word. 73 Dave W3DET
Exchange: Callsign, Category, ARRL or RAC Section (or DX outside of US and Canada). For example 1 person from a North Texas campground might send "KX5XYZ M0 NTX" or "KX5XYZ 1H NTX" Much simpler I agree. I'll see if I can form a group. Could be lot of fun 73
My club has been doing WFD at a remote location for several years now.. we're a club of about 150 and we generally get about 40 folks show up over the weekend. We take over a Catholic Summer Youth camp and it's out-buildings, with stations and antennas all over the place. The camp gives us a very reasonable price for it's use as the buildings are normally vacant all winter, yet still have to be heated. With access to a full kitchen and dorm rooms, it turns into a real overnight social event/adventure for the club... every bit as much fun as ARRL's Field Day. We're in the Great White North so antenna erection and getting set up usually means trudging through 6-24 inches of snow and heavy Winter clothing, but everyone chips in and "gits 'er done"!! We've always run battery power for the bonus points.. which takes some doing when trying to run as close to 100W as possible (LOTs of extra batteries)
For the last couple of years our club (Sarasota Amateur Radio Association) has participated in Winter Field Day. This is a great opportunity for our small club to get together. I want to thank the guys that have picked up the ball and ran with it and created the Winter Field Day Association to keep this going.
We operated last year for the first time from Indian Lake NY and plan on being back there in 2016! Our group had never done it before and we had a great time shoveling our way in to the site through 4 feet of snow. We operated for 24 hours, one of our members even stayed outside in a tent in 5 degrees! Look for W2WCR the weekend of Jan 30th and 31st 2016!
Good time to get the boat anchors out to warm the tent. I might just have to do that, sounds like fun. "SAP"
Just another contest that will tie up the bands. Do we really need another frickin contest? The ARRL contests every other weekend all year long aren't enough for you?If you were REALLY interested in establishing communications in adverse weather, why would there be rules and points awarded? Wouldn't you just want to do it for the self satisfaction and knowing that you were helping your fellow man in the case of a REAL emergency?
WFD is a welcome fun outdoor-related activity in the doldrums of winter, very glad to see the interest in it! Also, great article by Ken, N8KC, I'd say that even if he wasn't the president of my club!
