Snake River Amateur Radio Club  

    ARRL Field Day 2022

   This year we tried a new location: Givens Hot Springs, just a few miles South of Marsing. It's a great place for us, with lots of antenna room, lots of shade, and those lovely hot springs to go relax in.

   We were pretty short-handed this year due to other comittments taking priority for a lot of our members, but we got it done . All we needed was an "easy" button... and better propagation, but we'll get to that.

^^ Givens Hot springs, located 11 miles south of Marsing, Idaho was homesteaded in 1878 by Milford and Mattie Givens. The springs property is still owned and operated by the family, with guest cottages, a large pool house, along with both RV and tent camping.

^^ The pool house, with its naturally hot mineral spring water is clearly the main attraction of the facilities, with good reason. Soaking in the pools will make you feel like a new person.

^^ Too bad for us that we were on a mission to hunt the elusive contact and missed out on the hot spring pool. Time to squeeze in and get unloaded.

^^ Since the group was so small, we decided to go with a single 10x10 pop-up shelter and a 3A designation, indicating only three stations on the air.

^^ As usual, we ran all stations off of solar panels and batteries, using QRP power levels (5 watts output). This turned out to be something of a hindrance during the event.

^^ Just our luck, there was a massive solar storm the day before Field Day, and we encountered a huge amount of noise on the bands during the day. Our little QRP signal was getting lost in the background. In fact, our only contacts during the daytime were from John,KD7HGS, who was using FT8.This is a digital format that works especially well in poor and noisy conditions, and he proved it by making over 40 contacts on 5 watts to the rest of us getting none.

^^ Well, if you can't make contacts, might as well make supper and socialize in the shade. St. Louis cut ribs, potatoes, corn on the cob and apple pie, All from the dutch ovens of our camp cooks Bob, W7RLS and Steve, WB7VEQ. Yum!

^^ This odd-looking setup was used by Bob, W7RLS, to keep his batteries charged throughout the contest. 240 watts of solar went into the power station on the left, which powered a 110 volt smart charger that kept the radio batteries topped off. Later on in the evening, when the daytime noise died down, he used this setup to make 31 QRP contacts.

^^ This setup belonged to Steve, WB7VEQ. The Yaesu FT-840 blends in well with the sinister black color coordination. He made at least 12 QRP contacts into Canada and the Pacific area with this.

All-in-all, in spite of the horrible band conditions, we had a good weekend. Good company, good food, a nice, shady place to camp, and radio.What more do you need? We hope you will join us next year for another episode of "QRP-IS-US against the world!" Or something similar at any rate. 73!