Field Day 2025
June 28 - 29 , 2025
Prologue:
The annual Field Day event is sponsored by the Amateur Radio Relay League and is the most anticipated and beloved amateur radio event in the United States each year. Radio clubs and individuals around the USA, Canada, and Mexico take to the fields to set up and operate their radios in order to demonstrate their capability in less than optimal conditions. It is a showcase event to the public to show off amateur communications during a simulated emergency or disaster. For everyone involved, this is a fun time to get together and enjoy the great outdoors and the camaraderie. The event is always the last full weekend of June and runs 24 hours beginning at 1PM on Saturday.
The weatherman said that the prediction was for hot, sticky days interspersed with pop-up thunderstorms. 
This turned out to be quite accurate with highs in the low 90's and periods of rain with thunder and lightning. Once again, "The Shop" at Glenn N4MJ's QTH was the most excellent venue for the club's Field Day event. The air conditioner which gave us trouble last year, was in good shape for the event this year.
The Reelfoot Amateur Radio Club had been placing high each year - last year 11th nationwide - in the very competitive 2A class. But this time, with Solar Cycle 25 at its peak, we decided to up our game a bit. This year, we decided to go QRP ! This means all radios would have to run at 5 watts instead of the 100 watts in previous years. We further decided to run on battery instead of a gas-powered generator. The class would remain 2A, but the power multiplier would increase from 2 points to 5 points. This meant that any 2 point QSO, CW or digital, would effectively count 10 points !
Setup:
With the club operation going QRP this year, this presented an opportunity to showcase some of our lighter weight low power radios. As is the usual procedure, radio setup began on Thursday evening prior to Field Day at "The Shop". 
Pizzas were provided by Glenn N4MJ and XYL Linda ! Yum !! Everything was up and running in about an hour with socializing going on for another hour.
The Get On The Air (GOTA) station consisted of Patrick KO4HEX's Yaesu FT-817, which he recently acquired from Glenn N4MJ this past spring at the Trenton Hamfest. This radio does not have a tuner so an Elecraft T1 portable QRP tuner was provided by Dad, Jamie WB4YDL. Power for this station was a 50 Ah Lithium battery. This station runs with the callsign N4MJ for the event. Also this station stays busy with the youth participation.
For the class designation of 2A, the two HF stations consisted of (HF1) Jamie WB4YDL's Elecraft KX3 (with built-in tuner) and (HF2) Phil N4PWG's Icom IC-705 (also with built-in tuner). The HF1 station is powered by another 50 Ah Lithium battery.
The "free" VHF station this year consisted of Jamie WB4YDL's Yaesu FT-818 which has all-mode capability up to the 70 cm. band. This station also incorporates an AirSpy K2 SDR receiver used for satellite communication. This year, satellite communication was going to be a LOT tougher as, not only are we using one tenth the output power, but the number of available "birds" was even more limited than last year. Power for this station and the HF2 station was with a 100 Ah Lithium battery.
All stations are capable of any mode, digital or analog. Sound card interfacing was generally done via the very capable DigiRig interface except for the IC-705 which is incorporated internally. Also, since we wanted to minimize the amount of hardware for this event, the VHF station used a software modem,
Soundmodem, instead of using a hardware modem, the Kantronics KPC-3+, to send and receive Packet radio Winlink messages. The satellite antennas (simple Arrow yagis for 2M and 70 cm) were mounted on a PVC crossboom using a Yaesu G-5500 alt-az rotator system. With Solar Cycle 25 at peak, it was hoped that 6 meters would be a productive band.
The following afternoon, we met to raise the antennas that were going to be used. For HF, this consisted of the TN-07 inverted-L antenna for the Elecraft KX3 station and a 80M end-fed half-wave antenna configured as an inverted-L and a Mosley TA-32 Mini yagi for the HF2 Icom IC-705 station. The inverted-L antenna was mounted on a 50 foot SpiderMast at the 40 foot level ! We also had another 40M OCD (off-center fed dipole) that would be attached to the GOTA station. These antennas are very simple antennas and took little time to deploy. The 6M antenna would also be a small yagi on a mast. 2M activity would borrow the satellite Arrow yagi for such things as Winlink traffic.
The Operation:
Saturday morning was met with gray skies and the threat of incoming thunderstorms. The solar panels were set up even though there was no sunshine to capture ! Temperatures were in the low 80's for the time being. All radios checked out and the Redodo battery app said that all lithium batteries were ready to go. As Go time approached, there was a clap of thunder and rain began to fall ! All radio antennas were disconnected ... and there we were !
During the down time at the start, Patrick KO4HEX, our Field Day chairman, made good use of it and did an excellent educational session. He used Salty Walt's new antenna book and demonstrated how to build a complete vertical antenna for 20M operation. At the end, he gave it to Ben KO4MAO for his use. All this was presented in front of his very nice Public Information poster display. At about 30 minutes after the start of Field Day, the thunderstorm had passed and we were off to the races. Glenn N4MJ traditionally sat down at the key and made the initial contacts on solar power. The HF1 station was set up for solar power with a different battery pack connected to a Bioenno 30 watt solar panel. Normally, 5 QSO's are made on solar power for this alternative power bonus. Glenn was able to quickly put in 11 QSO's !
Phil N4PWG was trying to run FT8 on 20M and was having difficulty making quick contacts. Even the quicker FT4 mode was slow going. It became apparent that CW was outperforming digital mode operation ! Both HF stations started to pick up steam when the mode used was CW. Phil N4PWG had a nice CW reader that was helpful to him and wasn't half bad in accuracy. 
Besides Phil, we had three other operators that could operate Morse Code : Glenn N4MJ, Jamie WB4YDL, and Patrick KO4HEX.
Jamie WB4YDL started operation on the VHF station by first checking into the local Winlink Packet node and quickly discovered that he had the 100 point NTS message bonus wrapped up ! Over 10 messages were received from all over the continent, and shortly, return messages were sent. Winlink was checked intermittently throughout the event. Also, Jamie set up an APRS object of our Field Day site in hopes of attracting visitors. After this, Jamie copied the W1AW Field Day bulletin and sent a NTS Radiogram to the Tennessee Section Manager, David KM4NYI.
The GOTA station was activated by 18 year old Ben KO4MAO, who will be leaving for his freshman year at Liberty University this fall. Ben and his three younger brothers accounted for our youth participation bonus. Mostly digital QSO's were made here, but a few phone contacts were also made.
With Solar Cycle 25 at its peak, there was some unsettled conditions that accounted for poor 10M propagation. Interestingly, 6M activity picked up later in the night. The "money" bands were 40M for CW and 20M for digital modes.
Excellent burgers and 'dogs were grilled by our grill master Noel KJ4UNX and Harold KM4FTM brought a beautiful 3 layer chocolate cake made with imported Italian chocolate ! Wow !! Also, he made two racks of homemade cinnamon rolls ! Nobody came and left hungry ! The solar telescope stayed in its case as there was no sunshine this Field Day.
Several attempts were made at a satellite contact by Jamie WB4YDL and finally, with the Russian RS-44 "bird" nearly out of range, a hard-fought QSO was made on this linear transponder with a station in Michigan. This was good for another 100 point bonus !
The night shift was occupied by Ben KO4MAO, Patrick KO4HEX, and Michael AK4VU. They were all able to catch power naps ! The air conditioning definitely helped with the comfort. But even then, it was noticed that the radios were getting warm and external fans were applied with good results.
This year, we had a total of 11 operators with 4 youth participants. Also present once again was Obion County Commissioner, Ralph Puckett, who represented our elected official visitor.
Finally, at 1 PM Sunday, the operations ceased and another Field Day was in the books !
The Results:
So, as the solar cycle is approaching its peak and activity on the bands gets hot, how did this translate for this Field Day ? Here are the line scores :Score Summary:
| CW | Digital | Phone |
Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total QSO's | 246 |
383 |
30 |
659 |
Band / Mode QSO Breakdown:
| CW | Digital | Phone | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 80M | 1 |
74 |
0 |
75 |
| 40M | 104 |
36 |
0 |
140 |
| 20M | 90 |
91 |
3 |
184 |
| 15M | 48 |
1 |
1 |
50 |
| 10M | 3 |
0 |
1 |
4 |
| 6M | 0 |
66 |
0 |
66 |
| SAT | 0 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
| GOTA | 0 |
115 |
24 |
139 |
| TOTAL | 246 |
383 |
30 |
659 |
The bonus point total this year was 2225 points which was down from last year. However, this was expected for a QRP operation with fewer operators. We were not able to obtain the public service announcement bonus this year. 
The total QSO score after the power multiplier (x5) came out to 6440 points, a huge 1722 point improvement from last year ! This was thanks in large part to a massive increase in CW contacts and points. Over 240 CW QSO's were made. If it wasn't for the 115 digital QSO's made by the GOTA station, CW would've reigned supreme ! Of course, all of these 2 point QSO's saw a power multiplier of 5x, which certainly contributed to the high score.
The VHF station made quite a showing with 6M becoming active at night. This accounted for roughly 20 more QSO's than last year. Also, a satellite contact was made under very difficult conditions with the Russian RS-44 linear transponder satellite.
Less overall QSO's were made as we were operating QRP, and this was expected. However, the bonus points achieved and the power multiplier of 5x more than made up the difference. The total submitted score was 8665 points for Reelfoot Amateur Radio Club in the class 2AB category. 
This is a new club Field Day record !! Now comparing this year to last is an apples to oranges deal. However, this score exceeds our class 2A score from last year by 547 points.
So, how did the batteries hold up, you ask ? Quite well !! The Redodo lithium iron phosphate batteries could have continued for another week ! The 100 Ah battery was down to 91% and the two 50 Ah batteries were each down to 88%. Not bad at all !
The decision was made this year to try something new and to challenge our already seasoned operators to perform even better. With different radios, a little more software, and more than a few less watts, as a club, this Field Day effort was spectacular !
Epilogue:
Once again, the gang at Reelfoot Amateur Radio Club showed out ! New antennas and new radios were used in a new paradigm. We again had excellent participation and we learned that CW really can perform well. Maybe we'll see more CW operators in the club as a result. It remains to seen how we'll stack up against our peers in this new class of operation.
Photography credits go to Jamie WB4YDL, Patrick KO4HEX, and Glenn N4MJ.
The Shop at the QTH of Glenn N4MJ was once again the perfect Field Day location and the club members owe many thanks to Glenn and XYL Linda for a wonderful experience. Thanks also go to our XYL's who kept us fed and hydrated. The full Field Day results are published in the December issue of QST.
Soapbox:
Glenn N4MJ :
FD 2025 was our first experience using QRP and we had a lot of fun. The score is forthcoming but from my view it appears we did very well.
Equipment was FT-817, FT-818, IC -705, and KX-3. Li Ion batteries. Antennas used: Multiband OCF (40-10), 80m EF in an inverted L config and shorter inverted L. Satellite antennas were small yagis on an az/el rotator about 4 feet above the ground.
Club President Noel, KJ4UNX, was the chef and as usual the grilled food was outstanding. Multiple dishes brought in by XYLs were superb. Cookie and chips were plentiful. Harold, KJ4FTM, brought a beautiful and great tasting 3 layer chocolate cake, the top decorated with chocolate roses.
Will we do QRP again next year? Probably.
What did we learn from this op? We learned that QRP works and that it can compete with QRO. We learned that the 80m EF antenna worked extremely well on all bands.
73 de n4mj//glenn
Patrick KO4HEX :
This year for field day I was happy that I was able to attend both the Thursday and Friday “set up” days at the shack this year. Normally my work schedule prevents me from showing up on Friday. One thing that never really changes is the heat! It was a very hot setup day on Friday as we setup the antennas.
The highlight this year was Mike’s big spiderbeam mast that went up almost 60ft!! after a little trial and error and the mast only falling once, we did get it setup and it lasted through a couple of summer showers. The setup on the other antennas was fairly routine.
This was the first year for me being the field day chairman. We had to do a bit of scrambling this year as nothing really ever goes according to plan, but we finally, got all of the station responsibilities ironed out, as well as food, and other check list items such as the poster board that we made. Be me, I mean my XYL 😊.
As field day kicked off, I provided the educational demonstration by highlighting Salty Walt’s antenna book and building a 20M vertical out of some silicone coated wire and a bnc banana clip. Very affordable antenna to make. I think it only took 5 minutes to build.
After the educational demo, it was “go time”. This year we did things a little differently, by operating QRP on battery power. The batteries worked like a charm. We had 2 50AH batteries and 1 100AH battery. By the end of things, they only used about 10% of their capacity.
We had some really nice participation this year, as well as using a variety of modes and bands. Shockingly, CW almost beat out the digital contacts for us this year. We really seemed to struggle on the FT modes on QRP, competing with the 100w stations. We even made several contacts on SSB!
This year we had a different crew of folks stay overnight including myself, Ben (KO4MAO), and Phil (N4PWG). We tried to manage a rotation, but we all ended up asleep at some point.
Overall, the field day was very successful. Great food, and a great time playing radio with friends. We had a record breaking score of 8,665! Which is shocking considering this is the first time we have operated this way. I look forward to attempting this setup again next year!!
See you on Field Day 2026 !
When all else fails ... Amateur Radio.
