Last month I participated in the Amateur Radio Relay League's Field Day, a ham radio contest in which hams operate "in the field", usually with emergency power sources, as a test of our capabilites to operate under adverse conditions. Lisa and I rented an RV and went to the Keys, so I did Field Day from there. I considered operating from inside the RV, but I wanted the authentic field day experience. Although I was running on commercial power and slept in the air conditioned RV, I spent about 16 hours of the 24 hour period in the tent. It was hot as hell during the afternoon, but quite comfortable at night. As you can see from the photos I had a fan, and I was drinking a lot of water (OK, sodas and beer too) so it wasn't too bad. I had to use a compromise antenna, the Chameleon V4 dipole, which as you can see is not very high off the ground, which means my signal was mostly going straight up; despite that , I made contacts all over the US as well as Costa Rica and Puerto Rico. The farthest contact I made was Seattle, WA. I only made 46 contacts, but I consider the experience to be completely successful. I even submitted my logs to ARRL; I certainly won't win the contest but I am proud of what I was able to accomplish.
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