We had a great time at Winter Field Day 2021. We arrived at Alum Creek State Park late Friday afternoon around 4:30pm. We setup our tents and other camping equipment along with getting the radio equipment unpacked. George set up his popup with sides to put the radio equipment in and the heater. Grant and his dad Tom brought firewood and got a fire going. Many thanks to Joe for the fire wood. We even did an experiment putting up a wire antenna around 10:30pm when it was coldest outside to see if worked better. The jury is still out on the experiment. You will see that in the video that Dave made. Six of us stayed over night Friday, 2 people in their camper, 3 in tents, and one person in the popup that had our radio equipment in it and the propane heater.
Saturday after breakfast we strung up another antenna and refilled the propane tanks around lunch time. We went through one of two 20 pound tanks Friday night and knew what was left in the one tank wouldn’t carry us over until Sunday morning. We got roughly 12-13 hours on a 20 pound tank of propane with the 30,000 -80,000 BTU heater running mostly on low https://www.mrheater.com/80-000-btu-propane-convection-heater.html .
John and Cat arrived and stayed over on Saturday night in their campsite and brought some awesome home made chicken in noodles with them in a crock pot. That held us over for both Lunch and supper. Cat also made a dump cake Saturday night in the dutch oven on the fire. That hit the spot. A couple people that were there Friday left before the snow started.
We casually operated Winter Field Day as 1 O Ohio (One outdoor station in Ohio). It was a fun operating and making contacts on HF. We also had Joe, Frank and his wife, and Robert stop in for a visit on Saturday. Saturday night the snow started and was mostly snow with a mix of rain/sleet/freezing rain at times. One learning experience was keeping the falling snow knocked off the pop-ups, especially the inexpensive slanted leg one to keep it from caving it in. The straight legged pop-up with the heater in it was better designed and seemed to do a better job at handling the snow load, plus some of the snow melted off it.
Sunday morning we started packing up around 7:30-8am and were headed back to Marysville by 10am. There was a fair amount of snow on the ground, enough that the campground had the roads plowed out, and it was still snowing. The electric at the campsite was good to have and the short walk to the open heated shower house with bathrooms worked out extremely well.
We hope you enjoy the video of our informal Winter Field Day weekend that Dave put together. If you can, please subscribe to our club’s you tube channel. If we can get 1,000 or more subscribers then we will be able to live stream with the youtube mobile app at our club events.
73,
Ed, KE8ANU
