2025 ARRL Field day at cape lookout was more of a fun trip to work out bugs from my failed CQ WPX camp trip.
Using a different antenna tuner with the same antenna from WPX presented ZERO issues, so now I am more curious about taking a closer look at the antenna tuner as the source of the problems. The radio used for FD was my Elecraft K2. Everything else EXCEPT the tuner was the same set up as used for WPX.
Result: FD, everything worked. WPX, transmit issues out the wazzoo and I bailed out before the contest started.
Ahem.
Since the trip was also an extended birthday party, spent a lot more time on smoking cigars and sipping really nice whiskey. Despite that, still managed to cage 232 QSOs. As a change of pace I ran packet spots, and had fun just punching cw spots. Total operating time was about 8 hours, with 3 hours at the start on saturday afternoon and the bulk of it Sunday morning. Both periods terminated by food, whiskey, and cigars.
Sensing a theme there….
Some photos in a slide show from the field day hootch: http://w4kaz.com/images/2025_fieldday/
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