Field Day 2025 took place at Silver Star Mountain Resort in parking lot E at an altitude of 1,600m (about 5,200 ft). This gave great take off for our antennas in all directions except due north... and we needed all the help we could get given marginal HF propagation conditions at times during the event!
First, the club's sincere thanks to Ginny Scott, Local Sales Manager at SSMR, for pulling everything together for us and doing an excellent job of hosting the club. We had exclusive use of lot E for the club and visiting members, plus free access to the showers in the village. Very much appreciated.
Views from the location were amazing. You can find a selection of some of the photos taken at this link (hosted on the club's Google account) https://photos.app.goo.gl/cA3H5JidHte1HJPj7
Campers assembled starting as early as the Thursday evening with the majority arriving on Friday evening. Campers included Howard VA7PWF, Colin VA7EEH, Lorne VE7LWK, Simon VE7RIZ, Jerome VE7JAR. Jane VE7WWJ and Mike VE7KPZ also camped with the club for the Friday night. VA7EEH, VA7PWF and VA7RLX arrived early on the Thursday afternoon and enjoyed supper at the resort's Red Antler pub.
There were the usual ups and downs getting Cranky, the club's trailer-mounted telescopic mast, properly set up and operational. But within a couple of hours everything was working just fine although we did discover a coax cable failure as the event progressed. VE7RIZ provided wireless internet which was accessible in most of the camping area and took some wonderful photos and drone shots. Unfortunately we don't have room on our Google drive for the movies as well.
Operators included Simon VE7RIZ (a guest who lives in Merritt) , Jerome VE7JAR, Ritchie VA7RLX, Brad VE7WBM, Warren VA7WPX, Felix VA7VOL, Howard VA7PWF and Lorne VE7LWK. Day visitors who dropped in to show support and help eat the great lunch included club members Gary VE7GCP, David VA7SK, Brad VE7WBM and Doug VA7CPS. Multiple guests from OCARC arrived, which was fantastic, including former NORAC member Doug VE7VZ.
Colin VA7EEH and Howard VA7PWF were the stars of the show and planned and organized pretty much everything for the club. Howard provided a great operations tent and Colin did a lot of work getting the laptops and N3FJP logging software working through the event. THANK YOU BOTH VERY MUCH.
Jerome VE7JAR and family enjoyed some mountain biking and Jerome tackled and survived the challenging Beowulf trail. Ritchie VA7RLX enjoyed a couple of hikes and only had one wildlife encounter with a very friendly golden retriever and its owner. However early on the Sunday morning a large black bear did wander across the campsite and disembowelled the garbage can pretty effectively. That bear knew how to take apart so-called bearproof garbage cans!
The club had decided this would be a fun event but for those interested we completed 394 contacts in total. 4 CW, 28 FT8 and 362 SSB. We operated on 80 through 10m. CQs were sent out on 6m but no contacts resulted. All those who attended thoroughly enjoyed the mountain location and low noise operating conditions.