By Don Sandstrom, W7VXS

The Boeing Employees Amateur Radio Society (BEARS) of Seattle, Washington, was represented on ARRL Field Day again this year during a gathering at the Museum of Flight (MoF) facility, where members operated in the national event and enjoyed some camaraderie and in-person contacts. The event took place on June 27 – 28, with operation starting at 11:00 AM PDT Saturday, and continuing to 11:00 AM Sunday. A preparation team arrived Friday morning to start setting up.

Operation consisted of an HF station in the club trailer that was operating FT-8 and using the tower-mounted HF beam. A field station was also set up just inside the MoF parking lot fence, north of the ham shack in the MoF step van, that used our A3S beam antenna and trailer-mounted tower. The UHF Winlink station in the trailer was used to send messages to ARRL officials, and our satellite station also made a contact.

Emergency power for the ham shack was provided by the MoF site generator, which was tested by Ray Fletcher, KB7VMS. A generator was used at the field station and as an experiment. A portable solar setup was also connected to the radio and provided power for that component.

A total of 222 contacts were made, which garnered a total operating score of 882 points. We also earned 600 bonus points for operating emergency power, sending an ARRL Section Manager message, making natural-power contacts, having site safety responsibilities, making a satellite contact, and making a web entry. The combined score of 1,482 was uploaded to ARRL’s online submission web page. Look for our listing in the score results, published in an upcoming issue of QST.