Hi!

After the last couple of years working Field Day from the Phoenix area, I went back to a picnic ground in the Kaibab National Forest along old US-66 between Williams and Flagstaff in northern Arizona for the 2016 Field Day. Since it was 20 degrees cooler in this area compared to the Phoenix area, this was a better way to work Field Day. HF/6m propagation wasn't very good until later in the day, and running QRP made this a challenge. I also worked satellites, which were active throughout the day. I was able to make my QSOs on the passes later in the afternoon and early evening, before packing up and returning to Phoenix.

For the early and mid-afternoon, HF and 6m were not working very well for me. I was using a Yaesu FT-897D and Buddipole dipole for my HF/6m station. The two internal battery packs in the FT-897D failed within minutes of starting to work stations, so I had to run the radio on a 12V/24Ah jumpstart battery pack. Since I was only operating at 5 watts, this was no problem.

On the satellites, I tried working an ISS pass using packet a few minutes into the start of Field Day, a shallow pass to the northeast, which was not successful. Same with an FO-29 pass to the west in the mid-afternoon, and an eastern SO-50 pass around the same time. Success started to come my way after 2300 UTC Saturday afternoon...

The ISS passed by around 2311 UTC , going from the northwest across the northern and eastern sky, covering much of the continental USA and Canada. After unsuccessfully trying to work a California station using APRS messages early in the pass, VE5AA in Saskatchewan called me. I made an exchange with VE5AA, followed by working another California station KK6QMS and K7RDG in southern Arizona. All of this using only a Kenwood TH-D72A HT and Elk Antennas handheld 2m/70cm log periodic antenna!

Shortly after the ISS passed by, SO-50 came up from the southwest. This was a busy pass, but I was able to work W6KA in southern California early in the pass. I'm glad I got my QSO out of the way when I did, as this pass was busy with stations trying to work each other, and some stations transmitting to the satellite without the required 67.0 Hz CTCSS tone to activate the satellite's downlink transmitter.

About an hour later, NO-84 came out of the northwest sky, passing very high and almost directly overhead. I only heard one other station on the pass, WK7B - a club station near Flagstaff, about 25 miles east of me. We made our QSO, and nobody else showed up. A shame.

A couple of minutes after NO-84 went away, another ISS pass across the same part of the sky. No Field Day QSOs were logged, although I saw some Field Day stations that I wasn't able to work. Two stations called me, looking for my grid locator (DM45), which I gave.

The 0100-0200 UTC (1800-1900 local time) hour saw LIlacSat-2 and XW-2F pass by. LilacSat-2 has had an erratic operating schedule for the past few months, but it was nice to have it on for Field Day. I worked one station for points early in pass, AA5PK in west Texas. After that, I worked 4 other Field Day stations to help them get satellite QSOs, and no score in my log for them. I worked one other station that was only looking for my grid locator, just like on the ISS pass just before this pass. The nice part about this pass was how orderly it was. I was able to work it with a Wouxun KG-UV9D and Elk antenna, and other stations were able to make their exchanges - unlike the SO-50 passes earlier in the afternoon.

The last contact I made for 2016 Field Day was on the XW-2F satellite. For this pass, I used an FT-817ND as my transmit radio, and my SDRplay SDR receiver and an 8-inch Windows10 tablet as my downlink receiver. Both were connected through a diplexer to my Elk log periodic antenna. I worked K6FW in southern California early in the pass, then tried unsuccessfully to work a couple of other stations during the remainder of the pass. The waterfall display on the HDSDR program running on the Windows 10 tablet made it easy to see where the other stations were located on the transponder.

It's better to spend 8 hours working Field Day in the mountains, than having to work Field Day from the back yard with the desert heat. I'm hoping to go back to the mountains in 2017.

73!