Winter Field Day 2025 is Wrapped

All done, from home this year (more on that in a minute).  Thirty one contacts total, 25 digital, 6 phone, across 80, 40, 20, & 15m.  Here, have a bunch of random notes on the matter.

• 15m was LIT UP this year, and in fact that's where I made most of my contacts.
• 20m was good too.  40m was useable, and 80m was a stretch but the little antenna that could came through and got me that band as well.
• The FT-710 was a joy to use, but it drinks power at about 1.3A when just listening.  That's about double the draw of the FT-857d.  All that computing power and the big shiny waterfall display come at a cost.
• Draw in transmit was about 10A for 100 watt SSB and 25 watt digital transmissions.  To sustain operations at that draw level – about 4A average – you'd need at least 240 watts of solar panel and appropriate storage to maintain day and night operations.  For fun operating no more than 8 hours a day 80 watts of panel would be needed.  Round it up to 100 watts so as to have enough left over to run a coffee grinder.
• The event used 28.5AH out of the 40AH LiFePO4 battery.  Towards the end though, on transmit there was a 2 volt drop at the battery – pretty serious.  But the radio kept going and all seemed OK.
• On recharge, the battery drank in 29.5AH.  That's a loss of 1AH, or 2.5% after sitting for eight months.  Not bad at all!
• Of the four objectives that I thought were feasible while operating from home – running 100% on alternate power, copying the WFD special bulletin, using multiple modes, and operations to include one six-hour continuous operating period – all four were met.
• It was easy to copy the 18:15Z WFD special bulletin on 20m from the NW7US Ohio station .  That transmission was in Olivia 8/250.  Even when someone dumped a PSK-31 signal right on top of the Olivia signal, the copy was perfect.  The 00:15Z K1DDN transmission on 40m out of Colorado in Olivia 8/500 was just as easy to copy as well.
• I like most of this year's changes in the rules, with one exception.  Formerly there was a points multiplier for each band/mode combo worked.  This year, there's a single 6x multiplier iff you work at least six bands.  Zero if work less than six, and no more than six if you work more bands.  Note that these are bands, not band/mode combos.  That's tough, and it comes as an all-or-nothing step function.
• Probably just as well, because I forgot to grab a few 40m phone contacts when I easily could've.
• Back to the cold weather and operating from home this year.  It seems that I wasn't the only one to chicken out with this arctic cold blast coming in a few days before.  In 2023, 37% of the stations I worked were in the Outdoor class (as was I); this year, that was down to 16%.  That's a pretty significant drop.  It was a cold week and I think a lot of people needed a break.

Well, that was all fun, even though I missed out on my camping trip to Wright's Lake.  I'll try to squeeze one in in next month, and put up the mid-size W3EDP, 6m slim jim, and 2m/70cm 'jungle' jim.