Join Winter Field Day this weekend anytime from 2:00 Saturday until 2:00pm Sunday for 20 minutes or 2 hours or the whole 24 hours – it’s up to you!!!

• Club Station: Anyone is welcome to stop by Glen Park, Portsmouth, RI and visit the competitive tent-bound club station operating as W1SYE  for 24 hours straight. Carl KC1NAM will be there doing satellite setup and operating in his ham-van on Saturday from Noon to dusk – clearly visible. Operations at GLEN PARK are in a field on Barker Lane, which is off Glen Rd, which is off East Main Rd opposite Anna D’s Café near the Green Grocer in Portsmouth, RI. (Or other local or RI landmarks or where they used to be, depending on many things.)
• Solo Ops: NCRC encourages all club members to use their own call sign and make at least a few contacts sometime this weekend on 2m Simplex or HF. A battery-powered handheld radio contact made outdoors is one easy way to be 1O-RI (ONE OUTDOOR RI) and get in the logbooks. Invite your friends and XYLs to get on the radio too. From her 1H-RI UHF/VHF base station, Nancy KC1NEK will be welcoming all Simplex calls Saturday 2-5pm and Sun 10-Noon. You can pre-program your radio to these good Simplex channels to know in our area and test your reach:
  W1SYE Simplex 146.55; RI-ARES Simplex 147.420; 70cm option 446.1

Participating in Winter Field Day is a great way to start 2023. Newport County (RI) Radio Club has mapped out two paths to get involved.
First, using the club W1SYE call sign, NCRC will be operating a competitive HF station outdoors at Glen Park (exchange “1O RI”) and submitting a collective club score to Winter Field Day.  Plans to make a satellite contact are also underway.
Second, NCRC is offering another curated path for solo operators who want to participate in WFD operating under your own call sign.  Hoping club members will monitor the W1SYE Repeater and W1SYE Simplex frequency of 146.55 MHz during WFD to help other hams make at least one Simplex QSO as part of Winter Field Day 2023. (It’s so easy to forget how to move between the Repeater and a new or even programmed Simplex channel!)  WFD is here to help.

Please follow #WFD23 for updates.

For details contact President@w1sye.org

John Vecoli KC1KOO will be holding a Winter Field Day (Jan 29 & 30) training session via Zoom tomorrow, Wed Jan 19 at 7:30 PM.  You will receive an invitation via email.

Due to increased concerns over the pandemic, and after consulting with many of the potential operators, NCRC decided it was not safe to hold an in-person Winter Field Day activity this year.  That said, Winter Field Day continues as an individual activity, and club members are encouraged to participate any way they feel comfortable: From a home station (1H), in another building like an ECO (1I), or even outdoors at a park (1O).  All of those activities continue to be possible with participants operating using their own call signs.  The club can receive points for an aggregate score of all participating individual stations simply by specifying “W1SYE” as the “CLUB” in the individual log submission.  Speaking of logs, John has kindly agreed to act as a coordinator/consultant for log submissions to verify that everything is OK prior to submitting the log.

Several club members will be standing watch on 146.55 MHz FM listening for folks calling CQ WFD, and responding.  This can produce a bunch of points for the club, even as a single contact, and can be done by our members who hold a Technician License .  There are bonus points for being outside (at least 30 feet from your house), using alternative power (like a battery in a HT), and remote (not on your own property).  So a single 5 watt HT contact would produce a score of 1504 points – not bad for 3 minutes of activity from the street in front of your house!

If you decide to make lots of contacts, that’s great, but keep in mind that the category you choose to operate must remain the same for all the contacts – for example, if you are going to be (1O – 1 Outdoor), then all contacts must be made outdoors.  If you made some outdoors and some at your home station, then all of them must be considered 1H (1 Home), and the Remote and Outdoor bonus will not apply.

Rules for Winter Field Day are here: https://www.winterfieldday.com/_files/ugd/1c7085_0ef813621655469ca73adfb5427dcc35.pdf

John has provided this presentation that will be used during the training: Winter Field Day 2022 Team Brief