[Elecraft] OT: Field Day anecdotes

[Alan Bloom]

On 5/21/26 19:29, Kurt Pawlikowski via Elecraft wrote:
> Hi! Yes, FD stories!

Here's mine.  It was 1996 and I was doing my first coast-to-coast, 
self-supported bicycle tour.  I had packed a Wilderness Radio Sierra QRP 
rig (unbeknownst to me, a Wayne Burdick design), a homebrew CW paddle 
made of lightweight sheet metal, a homebrew antenna tuner, and a wire 
antenna that could be used on 40 or 20 meters.  I had never missed a 
Field Day since my earliest Novice days but, fortunately, we were 
planning a rest day in a campground in Memphis TN on the last weekend in 
June so my plan was to throw the antenna up in a tree and operate FD 
from there.

Unfortunately, Field Day is held not on the last weekend in June but on 
the FOURTH full weekend in June, which was the previous weekend that 
year (a phenomenon that happens one year out of seven).

So that's how I missed my first FD.

Alan N1AL