The IARU Region 1 Field Day (SSB) Amateur Radio Contest is a great idea for a joint club activity, with friends or individually. It is a chance to test yourself in many areas: field work, emergency power supply, design, antenna construction. Above all, it is good fun and often new experiences. If the contest is well organized, such field contests can also be an opportunity to show the local community who we are as amateurs and how valuable we can be in various situations.

Participation in this contest is already a tradition for the HF5L team – it is our seventh start. This time the operators were: Andrzej SP5DDF, Mirek SP5GNI, Marek SP5ISZ, Adam SP5UFK and Roman SP5ST. We were visited briefly by: Kamil SP5MTX, Janusz SP5IWZ and Piotr SQ5J. In terms of sports, the trip was successful – we made 431 contacts, mainly in the 14 MHz band. The equipment included an FT991 transceiver, dipoles for 160, 80 and 40 m jointly powered and suspended from the mast, a Mosley MiniBeam antenna with a rotator for 20, 15 and 10 m, a gasoline generator.

The place turned out to be a bullseye – a large square, close accommodation and a restaurant, a picturesque location near the Liwiec river, the possibility of kayaking, and no mosquitoes…

Adam SP5UFK deployed his equipment to the 144 MHz band and took part in the prestigious IARU VHF 2024 contest. Propagation conditions for VHF were poor, Adam made only 32 contacts in the contest.

The results of the SSB Fieldday 2024 competition have been published by the organizer.

Below are some photos from the trip, and a short montage of drone footage recorded by Kamil SP5MTX can be found on YouTube: https://youtube.com/shorts/WxVrADtsH74?feature=share