Field Day is a great opportunity to get outdoors, gain experience assembling equipment in the rough, and operate a station under challenging band conditions.  This year we operated QRP in the 9A Battery category from Mora Hill in Los Altos, California, overlooking the Silicon Valley from an elevation of 500 feet. 

We had 3 HF CW stations, 3 HF SSB stations, an HF digital station, a Get On The Air (GOTA) station, a satellite station, and several VHF/UHF stations.  In spite of being limited to 5 watts, we succeeded in making contacts all 50 states as well as Japan.

Our GOTA station was particularly popular with plenty of drop-in visitors including a good number of kids.  In addition to having a great time, each year we work at improving our equipment, antennas and operating skills.  

In order to minimize interference within our site, we took care to have HF transceivers with well-designed front-ends in order to minimize spur transmissions and receiver pumping/desensing.   All of our site’s HF stations used Elecraft K3 or KX3 transceivers.  As a result, we experienced no mutual interference between our transmitters – even though at times we had four transmitters (CW, Digital, SSB and GOTA) all active on the same band at the same time. We did set up our antennas in a line, all pointed at the East Coast, so the side lobe rejection helped reduce interference. 

Being outdoors also meant that we got to put up wild-n-crazy antennas that our spouses and neighbors might never allow back home.  We used two HF triplexers to simultaneously share a pair of HF tribanders between multiple stations on 10- 15- and 20 meters.  If you’d like to build one for your club, you can learn how to build one in K6KV’s article in the June 2010 issue of QST.  Other antennas included two rotatable, self-supporting 40m dipoles and 4-element monobanders on 15- and 20 meters.  

 Band conditions weren't as great as last year.  Sunspots peaked during the weekend at 137 , with geomagnetic instability resulting in a mid-latitude A-index between 13 and 17.  Due to the elevated A- and K- indexes, D-layer absorption was worse than normal, and as a result our 80m results was more limited.  Fifteen meters likewise didn't approach last year's numbers, and 10m was rotten.  But 20m meters was clearly the sweet spot for FD2013 and we did very well in all three modes (CW, SSB and Digital).  In addition, for the first time in several years, we made a couple satellite QSOs – not bad for QRP!  And so, in spite of the challenges, we had a load of fun.   (Be sure to let us know if you'd be interested in getting involved with our team in 2014.   We tend to be especially short-handed between midnight and 7am.)