Winter Field Day, the bookend to the ARRL’s long time summer event takes place during the last weekend of January. For some parts of the country, that may be ok, but here in Wisconsin, that time of year often means cold and snow.
In past Winter Field Day events, we’ve operated in all kinds of weather conditions and all sorts of locations. If it is too snowy so that we can’t make it out to our preferred location, then we end up operating at home. If the weather is sub-zero, then we bundle up and work through it. This year we were lucky on two fronts: nice weather and a great location.

Joe has a friend with a cottage rental in Central Wisconsin that sits on a beautiful lake. The cabin doesn’t get much activity in the winter months, so he let us use it. This cottage had it all, running water, three bedrooms, full kitchen, even wifi. With all the trappings of comfort, Dave joined Joe and me for a three transmitter Winter Field Day activation.
Watch this week’s video, Winter Field Day in a Luxury lakeside cabin:
After unloading the vehicles, we were ready for dinner. Fortunately there was a tavern not far away that had a great fish fry. The food was good and the drinks strong and it gave us the fortitude to carry on our weekend.
After dinner we sat down and configured our logging computers. There are a lot of choices you can make for logging your contacts for an event like Winter Field Day, and all of them have their pros and cons. We settled on contest logging program called N1MM+. N1MM has two features that were advantageous to us, first it has all the macros that Dave enjoys for effortless CW operation, and second, it networking is super simple. So simple, in fact, that with an inexpensive router, we were all able to connect. But the best part is that if any computer goes offline or shuts down, it take out the network. All contacts are synced in real time between all the machines, and every log is stored locally, so three computers meant three backup logs for the event. We didn’t lose a single contact over the weekend.

Running three transmitters in close proximity takes a fair amount of coordination, and you will receive interference. Sometimes you have to accept the interference and work around it. But usually you can minimize it with band pass filters. Fortunately between Dave and I, we had enough filters to cover everything between 80 and 10 meters. For the most part, the filters do work, but they aren’t perfect. 40 meter CW seems to always be the mode that causes the most grief for those operating on bands above that. Better in rig filtering would help with the interference. The Yaesu FT-891doesn’t have that much capability, but if we end up at the cabin again, we may bring the big guns out.

All in all the weekend went very well. We managed 650 contacts, with the bulk of them on the 20 meter band. Conditions were ok, with a fair amount of solar activity Saturday morning that increased noise and fading, but by late in the day, propagation had strengthened and we finished strong come Sunday morning when we shut down at about 11am local time. The contest was running for a few more hours, but we were ready to pack it in.
Band Mode QSOs Pts Pt/Q
1.8 CW 31 62 2.0
3.5 CW 11 22 2.0
3.5 LSB 4 4 1.0
3.5 RTTY 1 2 2.0
7 CW 15 30 2.0
7 LSB 44 44 1.0
14 CW 26 52 2.0
14 USB 320 320 1.0
21 CW 26 52 2.0
21 RTTY 3 6 2.0
21 USB 130 130 1.0
28 CW 6 12 2.0
28 USB 33 33 1.0
Total Both 650 769 1.2
Maybe we’ll get the cottage again next year. We have some ideas on how to make our participation even better, and it was a beautiful place to stay. Winter Field Day is billed as an emergency preparedness exercise, and using such a comfortable location may seem antithetical to those goals. But really it isn’t. We went to a place that had nothing and put it on the air. We worked through noise and interference. And we operated for an extended duration. Those that set up tents and shelters in the cold, I applaud you. But for any emergency, there are two sides of the communication: the forward location out in the thick of it, and the base camp. As someone that has worked both sides of that coin, base camp communications may be the greater challenge.
Before I go, the Minnesota QSO party is this weekend, Saturday February 1st, and Dave and I will be participating. Listen for callsign KØM. This year we are going to set up a multi-transmitter station at a POTA park (US-4236 Upper Mississippi Wildlife Refuge). Look for me on the upper bands (20, 15m) and Dave on the lower ones (40, 80). We want to do a combined kilo (1000 contacts) at the park, so you can help us out. The exchange is easy: State (or Minnesota County) and first name. First name is important, so be ready to give it to us when we ask. Next week’s video will be on that adventure.
I hope to catch you on the air.
MichaelKB9VBR
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