51 On Air Transmitters! The Record Breaking Field Day Tactics of W3AO

It is! Congrats.

 

Thank you. You're right.

 

Our generators are normal size, but totally "worked up" by K3EJJ, a retired professional from such things . He also fabricated the rotating guy rings at the W3LPL super station. - KE3Q

 

OK, thank you! Some of our guys argue (and prove, I think) that it is -- I don't bother arguing that point. KE3Q

 

Yeah, we never said that. The video maker I guess said that, did he? KE3Q I guess "last big FD" was a catchy title, he thought...

 

That's why FD 2020 was, IMHO, kind of sad. There was an actual emergency that prevented people from doing Field Day the way they normally did. So the general consensus was that everyone should just stay home. But it wasn't Club Day--it was Field Day. So there shouldn't have been anything stopping individual hams from setting up in some nearby field and operating there.

I did it from a nearby city park. And for Winter Field Day 2021, I camped at a State Park and operated from there. For both events, I stayed in my COVID bubble, but was nonetheless able to operate from the field.

 

Right some of our guys and other locals did go out 'in the field. of course, remembering those days, some people were extremely cautious. One friend, who weighs 300-400 pounds and is over 80 years old, rarely left home, had all their food delivered for a couple years. Those few times she did leave home she went back in the house through the garage, stripped naked, and went straight to the shower from there...

 

ARRL guys told me many years ago that sayng it's not a contest relieves them of referring the thing. Some of them remembered the paper log days -- often illegible, not hard to imagine. And they'd even had logs submitted on toilet paper. Rained on logs too, that had become illegible.

And I think "records" are unofficial. They may whatever they mean, if anything, to the guys participating and not much to anyone else. 51 transmitters, a record? Pff, amusing but not official. So there are unofficial category records, unofficial point records, unofficial QSO total records (all of them by category as well as overall) -- etc. Not FD but another event, a group of friends went to a Caribbean Island and won for NA or for the world or something. They were stoked. Then they were very deflated, disappointed, that little was made of it, in the magazine writeup, etc. Observing this I realized that whatever "meaning" one gets from such an accomplishment, savor it among yourself but don't expect anyone else to even notice. Self-satisfaction. - KE3Q

 

Me, I was glad to have the relief of doing FD from home, but agree it was "not the same" at all. But "at some age..." More than once I've mentioned to W3LPL and K3RA, "How much longer do we want to do this?" They still do... KE3Q