Winter Field Day was an absolute, soaking wet, endless slog from Hell. It’s currently late July, and the nightmares and shivers have subsided enough to share the tale of how two hams endured one of our most miserable POTA activations yet…
Winter Field Day 2024
WFD ’24 started out as successful as any of our other outings. Our goal was to head to Ruckle Park (POTA CA-4044) on Salt Spring Island, touted as “one of the most beautiful parks in the southern Gulf Islands area.” BC Parks invites guests to “pitch your tent in the grassy meadow overlooking Swanson Channel then lie back and relax, watching pleasure boats and ferries sail by in a stately and colourful parade.”
Sure – that sounds like a great idea! While it’s not in CN78, it is a rare POTA, with only three successful activations before we headed out to the island.
Our plan was to set up camp on Friday, spend the night and be ready to operate by the time WFD started at 11:00AM local time on Saturday – operate the contest, then head home on Sunday.
What could go wrong?
As we packed up our tents and radio gear, we came face-to-face with news that the province was staring down the barrel of an “atmospheric river” – what amounts to a painfully large amount of rain.
True to their word, as we began to unpack at our campsite, the rain started…
The rain was relentless and cold. You could see and hear the warm, dry ferries floating by all evening while we became numb to the sound of the rain. It didn’t drop down to freezing, but the weather hovered between 7-11C, biting into our morale – with only the distant hope of tomorrow’s DX keeping us going that first night. We set up a fire, but the rain was coming down so hard that it was a choice between staying cold and dry in the tent, or wet and warm out by the fire.
Contest Day 1
While the Sun did come up, it was hard to see past the clouds. Our tent had standing water, and the gear barely made it. Shoey made a coffee run, but we were only able to drink one each before they were unfortunately knocked down, adding to the pool at our feet. Unsurprisingly, we were the only folks at the park.
As the contest kicked off, we got on the air. The original plan was to operate as a 2O – 2 transmitter, outdoors. We started calling as a 2O, but the truth is, we never got a second station up, given how cold and wet we were (oh, and did I mention miserable?).
While the QTH conditions were pretty terrible, we pushed ourselves to operate QRP (<5 W) and to accomplish several of the bonus objectives, including: operating 100% on alternative power, operating away from home, deploying multiple antennas, operating on at least six different bands, sending/receiving a Winlink email, and operating six continuous hours during the event. The QRP doubled our score, but as of July 26, we have no idea what that total score is, because the lazy scrubs at WFD have yet to post the totals.
Contest Day 2
We spent the night operating, passing out around 2am, and getting back up around 6am for more radio. After two days of an atmospheric river dumping on us, the tent’s water barrier was completely overcome by the standing water around the tent. Eventually, the material was just letting the water in.
It was truly an awful night, and we didn’t get many QSOs for our trouble. Every year, we think that being a POTA will help us, but it never seems to matter much in the end; people are just hunting stations regardless of any other value they might bring.
We managed 83 QRP QSOs, and not one of them was worth it. 0/10 – would not recommend.
In the end, we packed up our soggy gear, trudged back to the truck, and headed home, leaving no trace and no good feelings for that barren, drenched corner of Salt Spring Island. We would have posted this sooner, had we not kept waiting on the final scores from WFD.
One final note – huge shout out to Uptown Pizza who kept this mission afloat by delivering live-saving pizza late at night, in the middle of this Pacific typhoon. You know #TeamTopLeft doesn’t do endorsements lightly – so please give them your business if you’re ever stuck on Salt Spring and unwilling to go home when the DX calls.
