The weather couldn’t have been better with mid 40s in the daytime at Nebo State Fishing Lake, the location for our WFD22 camp. Amusingly, our first contact was someone very close to us, in the vicinity of Holton, KS and we likely picked them up on groundwave. We spent the majority of the time hunting people calling CQ, which slowed us down considerably, but we made around 80 contacts in this way. The M37 and trailer worked beautifully, fresh out of the garage after servicing all 6 wheel hubs. My two sons joined us for a bit and operated a couple contacts, and a fellow amateur operator joined for the whole trip.
My Duracell Gel lead acid batteries are shot so we had to use the generator (a Honda eu2200i) on this trip, but it did not cause interference and it is very quiet. I am pretty disappointed with the Duracells, I will have to try LiFePo (Lithium Iron Phosphate) batteries at some point. I am very happy with the generator, very easy to maintain and appears to be very reliable.
I also continue to be very happy with the DX Commander antenna, very easy to setup and it has proven to be rugged. I can easily set it up solo but having help of course is welcome. I cut the elements for data frequencies, so I did use a tuner for voice operations, but it didn’t seem to hurt performance.
I really enjoy the WFD events and camping next to the frozen lake made for some beautiful scenery. Our score won’t be spectacular, but just getting out to a campsite and enjoying operating radio made the trip a lot of fun. Next field day, we will likely try incorporating another radio and antenna and try to double up our throughput, likely one data and one voice station.