Well the ARRL Field Day is over. It was a very different event this year. The COVID-19 pandemic forced it to be different. No large gatherings meant there wouldn’t be any 33A stations this year. At least I didn’t hear one. I think the largest group I heard was a 3A. Most of these operators were forced to work from home most as 1D stations, probably much more comfortable but without the comaraderie that you expect at field day. The ARRL amended the rules to allow 1D stations to earn points for contacting other 1D stations. Without this rule change I am not sure many hams would have participated.
I used field day this year to test out my new go box. I wanted to try and see how it would work with a couple of different antennas and at low power. Low power was important as my go box only has a 7AH battery. My setup was in our screen house with a vertical antenna.
Operating in the screen house went well. In the picture you might notice that a box tilted up. That is my MFJ-939Y tuner which was a late edition to the box box. I had to tilt it up since it was sitting on top of the radio’s speaker. After using the go box for a while, I decided I needed to make some tweaks, especially I needed to mount that tuner below the radio. After making those tweaks I moved to the back patio for the next go box test.
On the back patio with my tweaked go box using my BuddiStick Antenna and running 5 watts. The go box is working out great! I can easily carry this setup to any park, setup in a few minutes, and play radio for several hours. If I want to play longer or at higher power then I can bring along another battery or two. More details on the go box can be found in an earlier post.