So after having been licensed for only about 2 weeks - and only on the air a little under a week - we headed off to our club's Field Day event. This is a yearly event for ham radio operators where you setup "in the field" using alternate power (generators, solar, etc) and try to contact as many stations as you can in these conditions.

It was a lot of fun! It was a first time for both of us operating on anything but our local 2 meter repeater - and we operated on the 80, 40, 20, and 15 meter bands. We contacted stations in quite a few U.S. states as well as Canada, and it was amazingly cool. Not sure how many contacts we made - I made probably around 20 and she made probably around the same. We weren't really trying to push it; just having fun. :)

Tuning through a radio band, listening for something that sounds like a voice, then fine-tuning in to make it more and more intelligible, until you finally hear a "CQ field day CQ field day CQ field day", then transmitting the club call and hearing it come back from the other station... amazingly cool! Just can't put in into words. I'm trying... but failing. From the first contact through the 20th, it was just really cool; something you don't get just messing around on the local repeaters (which are still very cool in their own right!)

Another cool thing is we got to check out quite a few different radios. There was an Icom IC-7000 and a Yaesu FT-857, 847, and FT-920 among others. The one we were actually using to make our contacts was the FT-920, and it's amazingly nice. It's an older unit, but still very feature packed. It also has a lot of controls on it. There seems to be a trend in the newer designs towards less controls and smaller cases, so in order to change a lot of settings, you have to delve into menu trees. It seems much more efficient to have as many functions on separate controls as possible. The 920 definitely fits the bill there. I think we'll be seeking one out on the used market as it's a discontinued model.

Anyway. If you were working field day, and worked a contact from W9REG, it might have been me! If the voice was female, it was definitely KC9SPK. ;)

73!