We setup two tents for the short event: one for sleeping and maintaining our personal stuff, and then another for radio operations.
The push-up mast and log periodic antenna were a short distance away making for short feedline runs.
(I actually brought along a 25-element 23cm loop yagi but it didn’t end up working well with the poor feedline and connector adapters in place.)
With a nice folding table and chairs, it was a comfortable operating position.
The cool breeze kept things very pleasant during the entire event.
I managed to make twenty-five (25) contacts prior to the contest starting so I knew everything was working.
At 2PM I was ready.
At the start of the contest the contacts started flowing.
FT8 wasn’t a thing during the last contest I participated in, so I spent time figuring out the best way to incorporate it into my operation.
I knew that many people would be there but I was hoping there would still be a lot of people still doing analog where I could run the bands.
Unfortunately there weren’t as many.
I did run the bands with W3SZ, WS3C, W3IP, K1TEO, and K1RZ.
While operating I realized that I had 1.25m on my HT that was sitting on my table.
During my run with K1RZ I hooked up the HT to my log periodic antenna and made an FM contact with him.
I tried that with a rover later on but came up empty.
And while I was toiling away making contacts where was the rest of my family?
They did come back and made a few contacts later on.
Kids' soccer games precluded much of my operating time on Sunday.
We ended up packing up camp about mid-morning and headed to Southern Maryland for our next operating position.
Grids worked
Interestingly, I ended up working mostly New England grids while in FM19.
I thought I would be able to work more Midwest grids while at the higher altitude location but I only put EM28 in the log the entire time.