After Action Report: ARRL Field Day 2025

I participated in my first ARRL Field Day this past weekend, and it was an absolute blast! I was able to meet a ton of incredible people and learn from their vast knowledge on HF radio operation. I highly recommend that you participate in one as you will learn a lot. Yes, you may run into some sad HAMs (I most certainly did not), but just grit your teeth and smile.

I arrived Friday to set up camp. Many of the club members were already present on site with their campers, RVs, or palatial tents (looking at you, JohnyMac). I was able to quickly meet everyone – and of course crack a beer – and assist with a little bit of additional set-up before getting myself squared away. We were operating from an old fairgrounds on top of one of the mountains in NE PA. That night, we spent it around the fire having some drinks and cigars and just shooting the shit. Weather was nice and cool – it hit 52 overnight, which was glorious – and we went to bed eager to get started.

Waking up Saturday morning, it felt like you were in a zombie movie with the amount of fog that was at the site. It took quite some time for the fog to really burn off given our elevation.

Saturday at 2pm was the go time (and it would last 24 hours until 2pm Sunday), so after breakfast JohnyMac and I got our 80m-10m dipole strung up between some trees with the help of a payload dropping drone.

The payload dropped from the drone

When we went to test the radio, however, we could receive but not transmit. We quickly figured out that the finals on the radio were likely blown (and we think we know how it happened, but that’s another story). Luckily someone else had an extra Yaesu FT-897, so we rigged that up and we were good to go.

You can see a few other antennas and rigs in the photos below.

For those who have never done Field Day, each individual or group has a Class and a Section assigned to them. You also have to indicate how many people are operating that call sign. We were operating portable stations with three or more people using 100% emergency power (generators), so we were Class A. You would also be considered Class A if you were operating using QRP (5 watt max) and under battery power.

ARRL Field Day Classes:

Class A: Portable station with three or more operators using 100% emergency power.
Class A (Battery): Portable station with three or more operators, using 5 watts maximum and battery power.
Class B: Portable station with one or two operators.
Class C: Mobile stations.
Class D: Home station using commercial power.
Class E: Home station using emergency power.
Class F: Operation from an established Emergency Operations Center (EOC)

The section list can be seen below.

We had 8 individuals operating under The Susquehanna County Amateur Radio Club call sign of N3SRC.

Thus, we were N3SRC, 8A, EPA.

When 2pm hit, we started off on 40m trying to hit the states local to us. At the same time, we had others trying 10m and 15m, with 15m being quite successful and leading to contacts in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands as well as California. Since 10m was dead and had poor band conditions at that time, so the operators moved to 20m. Then, our two rockstar CW operators got rocking and were making 5-7 contacts for every voice contact we were making on 40m (the band was incredibly crowded). As far as my contacts went, I believe we were the second biggest Class A group that I either heard or contacted (one group was 9A), and we often got a a surprised “woah, that’s a big group you got!” response.

Early progress

We would be on the radio for 90 minutes or so and then take a break – grab a snack, beverage, etc. Around 5pm, we had a thunderstorm roll through so we disconnected all of the antennas and waited out the rain.

Sections in Blue are the ones hit by the team

After that, we hopped back to it. We eventually switched to 80m and transmitted late into the night, and I know personally that the bottle of Jim Beam Devil’s Cut was powering me on the radio up through around midnight.

We were able to make contacts with all of the eastern US except a few weird outliers – SNJ, ME, DE, and MS.

Starting to fill in

Delaware and Mississippi were really starting to piss me off at this point

Sunday morning I had to leave before the contest ended, but I hopped back on the radio on 20m just to get some more contacts. I was chatting with Montana, Wyoming, South Texas, and South Florida like they were sitting next to me. We also had our crack FT-8 teams starting the digital push.

This was what the map looked like when I departed around 11am. They still had 3 more hours of voice, and none of the digital FT-8 contacts had been added to the log yet. I think we did pretty good.

As I drove home from the event, I was smiling the whole way. Not only did I get to hang with great friends, old and new, but I was able to really gain confidence in my HF abilities and learn from true wellsprings of knowledge. I am already looking forward to Winter Field Day.

Final Statistics

States Missed Completely: Delaware, North Dakota, Hawaii

Territories Missed Completed: Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland/Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Territories

Sections Missed: East Bay (CA), Pacific (CA), San Francisco (CA), San Joaquin Valley (CA), Eastern Washington

Fucking Delaware….get your shit together

GET OUT AND TEST YOUR GEAR AND YOUR SKILLS. If it isn’t Field Day, find any day to do it. We always need more practice.

Looking to get into HF? I know a guy who hosts classes on that AND sells the gear you need to get on the air.

73

Patriotman