Field Day 2026 was a blast! The Pinecone Amateur Radio Club’s Field Day station was at Morrow Mountain State Park for the second consecutive year. There, Carl W8WZ and I operated continuously for the 24-hour period starting at 2pm EDT on Saturday in the 1-Bravo class, a two person portable station.
Preparations
This Field Day we rinsed and repeated last year’s strategy with the following adjustments:
- Operate in the 1B (one-bravo) category instead of 2A. This was due to having two operators instead of three. We considered running two transmitters in the 2B classification, but decided that we would be more competitive, and more importantly, have more FUN staffing a single transmitter for the duration of Field Day.
- Focus HF efforts solely on CW, partly due to the 2x multiplier, but mostly due to the joy it brings Carl and me.
- For the NTS-related bonus points, we would hang a dedicated 2m antenna at the cabin. This was to avoid the headache of staging a vehicle with a crossband repeater mobile rig at the Morrow Mountain overlook with line of sight to the 145.15 MHz W4GSO repeater 53 miles away (as we did last year).
- We paid attention to our notes from 2025. Good call.
Other than that, we used the same radios, EFHW antenna, and most importantly, the same menu!
Thursday: Arrival
I did all my packing on the monrning of my departure, not a best practice, and left the driveway at 1:40pm Thursday. This was 40 minutes later than the worst case that I considered the night before. I visited Clay’s Power Equipment on the way out of town to pick up some generator maintenance parts: oil, air filter, and spark plug. The guy helping me at the counter threw in a spark plug wrench for free. I’m a happy customer, thanks!
Carl and I arrived at Morrow Mountain State Park at 4:40pm. We unpacked the cars, took stock of our groceries, and made a shopping list for going into Albemarle. We visited Walmart first for a few household provisions. Dinner was at the Five Points Public House downtown. Carl had the ribeye, I had the mahi. The fried okra was good and the loaded baked potato was better. We went to Food Lion to pick up groceries for our stay and were careful to return to Morrow Mountain State Park before the gates closed at 10pm.
Friday: Setup
Friday’s station setup went very smoothly. The morning began with coffee and overnight french toast. The second order of business was hanging the MyAntennas EFHW-8010 end-fed halfwave antenna. The first few shots with the Big Shot and the 12 oz. throw bag were fouled as the line tangled on itself. Subsequent shots with the 10 oz. throw weight were perfect and cleared the top of the pine tree canopy (110+ feet). We initially measured the vertical section to 80 feet, but found that we had too much slack for the horizontal element and that the end of the antenna was too close to tree foilage.
We made a quick adjustment by sliding the Prusik Knot, used to suspend the “corner” of the antenna, two arm spans resulting in a 92 foot vertical section. The horizontal section was then able to flat top with room to spare before entring the oak tree that supported it. The result was an inverted-L EFHW antenna that was suspended by rope completely in free space, with no contact with tree foilage. It was beautiful to behold.
Carl made his family’s jambalaya recipe for lunch. Always a hit. The only risk is going back for seconds and thirds and not having enough for leftovers. Afterwards, we went up to the Morrow Mountain summit & overlook for Carl to attempt a satellite contact on SO-50. He was successful and made his first solo satellite contact! While we were at the overlook, Carl and I took a traditional Field Day picture. With cell reception unavailable at our cabin, I downloaded the user manual for the Honda EU-2200i.
Upon returning to the cabin, we began setting up the 2m Folding Ground Plane Antenna. The Big Shot beautifully placed a line over the top of a pine tree 100 feet high, allowing us to bring the antenna just below the lowest branch at approximately 60 feet high. Feeding the antenna with RG8X resulted in a poor signal that could barely make the 145.15 MHz NTS repeater in Greensboro. This would not be good enough to check into the NTS net for passing traffic during Field Day. We swapped in LMR400 and were able to get into the repeater with good signal reports.
Dinner was a cajun roast with vegetables over which we toasted the day’s smooth and efficient station setup.
Saturday: Morning
One of the first items Saturday morning was to perform some regular maintenance on the generator. The air filters looked ok, but the oil looked overdue for a change. We decided to change the oil and defer the air filter and spark plug replacement until we were back in Raleigh.
At high noon, Carl and I held the Pinecone Amateur Radio Club annual meeting. Carl took the minutes and we moved swiftly through our agenda. We then departed for the overlook for one last bit of contact with the outside world before we returned to our cabin to begin operating. I touched base with folks at home and Carl made a social media post for 100 bonus points.
Carl also left messages for our good friend John K4EB who was caving that weekend and had an HF radio with him. We had no cell reception back at our cabin and he had no reception in a cave, so we used text messages to set up skeds over the next 24 hours on HF on 7.160 MHz at 10pm, 11pm, 6am, and 7am. Hopefully he would see them and work us. We left the summit at 1:15pm, returned to the cabin, and turned on the generator for it’s 24-hour run.
Saturday: Operating
At 2pm Carl started at the operating position with the FTDX10 on 20m while I improvised a generator shelter. I folded an 8x10 blue tarp into quarters and used sheetbend knots to secure the corners to tent stakes. I created a ridgeline with some paracord and two 4 foot lengths of bamboo. As it turned out, rain did arrive later in the day. I’m happy to say that the improvised shelter was up to the task!
Throughout the weekend we were listening to NOAA weather reports on a 2m HT. It was the only way for us to receive weather information since we lacked cell reception. During the afternoon and evening there were strong thunderstorms west of us in Charlotte heading southeast. Storms north of us stretched from Randleman to Badin Lake heading were west. To our east near Fayetteville were severe thunderstorms with hail. Somehow none of this hit us and we were able to stay on the air.
We had some excitement at 7pm when Carl attempted to pass traffic to the NTS net on the 145.15 MHz W4GSO repeater in Greensboro. He was able to check in to the net when it started, but when called to pass traffic, was unable to make it into the repeater. We swapped in a backup 2m radio, powered everything off and on, put back in the primary radio, and lowered the antenna to check the connectors. By the time we got the antenna back in the air the net was almost over. Carl made one last call before the net closed and was heard by the net control station! Our traffic was passed and we picked up the bonus points. We never fully understood why we had difficulty after the net started.
We crossed 300 QSO mark at 8:30pm. At both 10:00pm and 11:00pm we paused CW operating and attempted to make contact with John on 40m SSB. We were unsuccessful in both cases. However, at 10:02pm EDT we made our lone SSB QSO of the whole event. Thanks W2ZJ! At 1:30am we hit 551 QSOs.
Sunday
I took the graveyard shift and operated from 1:45am to 6:00am. Carl woke up at 6:00am and we attempted to contact our good friend John K4EB. We were unsuccessful. Later that morning, at 7:15am, we realized that we had missed our 7:00am sked with John. We got on frequency hoping he might also be late, but did not make contact. We learned after the fact that this was the only of the four he was able to operate. Perhaps we would have made contact? Bands are so busy on Field Day it’s hard to be certain.
At 2:00pm we stopped operating and the band activity died down. We ended up with 1,011 QSOs across the 80m, 40m, 20m, 15m, and 10m bands. We were quite proud of our effort and were thrilled to have notched over a thousand QSOs.
That afternoon we began taking down antennas, coiling rope, stowing tarps, and packing up the HF station. We paused a long while for a steak dinner Carl prepared and discussed how pleased we were with our effort, improvements we might make for the next portable contest, and what the future might hold for Field Day 2027 (we have a really fun idea!).
Monday: Hitting the Road
Checkout time was at 10:00am and were packed up and out minutes before. Lunch would be at Country BBQ, a great little BBQ joint amid the retail-heavy Wendover Ave off of I-40 on the west side of Greensboro. From there, we took US-421 to Fuquay Varina where Carl would be setting up (again!) to operate as K2J for the 13 Colonies event.
Results
Our ADIF file for this event is availble for download.
In the week that followed, I submitted our Field Day entry to the ARRL. I also posted our score on 3830scores.com.
N1MM Score Summary
Band Mode QSOs Pts Pt/Q
3.5 CW 98 196 2.0
7 CW 471 942 2.0
7 LSB 1 1 1.0
14 CW 384 768 2.0
21 CW 57 114 2.0
28 CW 1 2 2.0
Total Both 1012 2023 2.0
Hourly Statistics
Sections Worked
N1MM Runs
N4BCJ Runs >10 QSOs: for computer named: LAPTOP-BD1SUO76
2026-06-27 1802 - 1926Z, 14046 kHz, 69 Qs, 48.8/hr W8WZ K4CBW
2026-06-27 2040 - 2115Z, 14032 kHz, 43 Qs, 73.7/hr K4CBW W8WZ
2026-06-27 2118 - 2250Z, 14037 kHz, 73 Qs, 47.6/hr W8WZ K4CBW
2026-06-27 2345 - 0155Z, 7026 kHz, 176 Qs, 81.2/hr K4CBW W8WZ
2026-06-28 0210 - 0229Z, 7025 kHz, 23 Qs, 70.8/hr W8WZ
2026-06-28 0236 - 0344Z, 7025 kHz, 66 Qs, 58.1/hr W8WZ
2026-06-28 0433 - 0539Z, 7027 kHz, 41 Qs, 37.1/hr W8WZ
2026-06-28 0643 - 0734Z, 3533 kHz, 39 Qs, 46.0/hr K4CBW
2026-06-28 0819 - 0845Z, 3529 kHz, 18 Qs, 41.6/hr K4CBW
2026-06-28 1012 - 1035Z, 3529 kHz, 20 Qs, 50.7/hr K4CBW
2026-06-28 1137 - 1146Z, 7018 kHz, 14 Qs, 98.2/hr W8WZ
2026-06-28 1209 - 1234Z, 7020 kHz, 35 Qs, 84.1/hr W8WZ
2026-06-28 1245 - 1324Z, 7025 kHz, 38 Qs, 58.9/hr W8WZ
2026-06-28 1344 - 1525Z, 14041 kHz, 92 Qs, 54.9/hr W8WZ K4CBW
2026-06-28 1612 - 1624Z, 7032 kHz, 11 Qs, 56.7/hr K4CBW
2026-06-28 1626 - 1656Z, 14029 kHz, 30 Qs, 60.1/hr K4CBW W8WZ
Notes for Next Time
- Continue bringing weather radio. The FT60 was extremely helpful with no cell reception.
- Bring a state map to be able to visualize the towns listed in weather radio reports.
- Weatherproof all coax connections.
- I need to check the length of RG8X for power handling
- Get a small camoflauge tarp (not blue!) and stakes for the generator instead of stealing stakes from a tent bag in the garage.
- Proceed with the idea of putting 250 feet of dacron on a rope winder in 2 gal Ziploc bags for easy rope management and weather-proofing.
