Winter Field Day 2019 was the first time that I participated fully in a contest. A few months ago I gave a couple weather reports for SKYWARN Recognition Day 2019. Since then I have called CQ a couple of times and had mostly short awkward QSLs. I missed the QSO Party the weekend of Jan 19th and 20th but had known ahead of time about Winter Field Day. Last weekend I set up my Winter Field Day logging program from Amateur Contact log and decided I would make a run at the event all weekend.

Day 1 I got on the air as soon as the event started at 1900 UTC on Jan 26th. I managed to chase 17 contacts on 20m until the bands faded out at around 2300 UTC. Overall I found my exchanges went well and I didn’t have to clarify my reports, meaning that my G5RV-JR set-up is working better than I initially thought. Late in the evening, I got back on the radio to see if I could make any contacts on 80m or 40m to no avail. The antenna does not tune up very well on 80m, and 40m seemed pretty dead as well.

Day 1 Results

Day 2 I got started around 1530 UTC and continued to chase contacts. I had thought about finding an open frequency and calling CQ for a while. However, my comfort level is not quite there for working harder to hear stations. I also set up spotting in the logging tool to try and find stations that were popping up in locations that I hadn’t worked yet. When LAX showed up I managed to catch quite a pile-up. I tried to see if I could break in, but it was hopeless in the mess of dozens of stations that were responding to his QRZ call.

LAX Pileup

Overall day 2 was a success as well. I managed to work a station on 40m to get a 2x multiplier. I scanned around on a few of the other bands but wasn’t able to find any stations to work. Considering it was my first contest and my goal was to learn to handle the exchange and see how well my signal was propagating on SSB, I’m happy with the two days of work. I worked a couple of stations right down to the wire and was amazed at how quickly everyone jumped off the air when 1900 UTC hit on Jan 27th.

Day 1 and 2 Cumulative Results

I learned some lessons learned over the two days. Setting up the spotting feature is quite nice for finding locations you haven’t worked yet. After the contest was over I also set up rig control in the main Amateur Contact Log app. I didn’t see settings for that in the Winter Field Day logger, but rig control combined with a spotter app can really speed up your operation.

I goofed on the band on a few of my logs, but luckily caught it early enough I was able to remember which bands I had made those contacts on. Setting up the rig control as mentioned above would mitigate this risk.

It’s really worthwhile to work on your multipliers for scoring. I’m going to get set up with some allowable digital modes for next year so I can get more modes. Eventually, I’ll add on CW as well. I’ll also spend a bit more time checking the bands that I don’t get good coverage on just to work a single contact for the multipliers. Next year I’ll also look at getting set up in the field so I can get some of the Soapbox points.

WFD Final Score

All in all, I had a fun time with Winter Field Day and look forward to the next contest I can find time for! Certainly, I have a long way to go. Last year’s winner scored around 44,000! But I’m a quick learner and will get my scores up soon!