N2RDY 2024 ARRL Field Day Results

As it stands today, July 30th 2024, there have been a total of 4,316 entries received for ARRL Field Day 2024.  The annual event took place on June 22nd and 23rd.  According to data from 2010 to including 2022, there have been 47,717 entries in that time period with the average year seeing 3,670 if the data is right. So by all accounts, it sounds like the COVID influence of Field Day is coming to an end! 

This was the first official year that Ulster & Northern Dutchess Readiness Group participated in Field Day and we put our new club callsign of N2RDY to good use.  This event was also the first time that this callsign has been used on the air since we inherited it from whoever had it last, but last year we borrowed the HVDN callsign of N2HVD.

Our group wanted to be 100% off grid and to truly put the "field" in "field day". While this may not be possible for some people given the hobby is trending older, given we planned to operate low power with our younger core group of people, we pretty much knew that if we could hear a station on the air, we should have no problem making contact with them even at the 5 watts we were limited to as a battery powered class A participant in the event in 2024.

The challenge of operating low power or "QRP" in this event means you need efficient antennae which send your signals where they are best received.  This year we chose two different antenna for the event to maximize our success using the 80m, 40m, 20m, 15m and 10m bands from Saturday 2:00 PM local time until about Sunday 7:00 AM local time.  While this is a 24 hour event and we could have easily stayed at the Vernooy Kill State Forest the whole time, we wanted an extra challenge of adding a fast breakdown and redeploying at another site on Sunday to join our friends at QSY Society located an hour away at Holmes Camp & Retreat across the river back in Dutchess County where K2QS was the callsign in use.

​During COVID, participation changed with this event where rules were adjusted to allow those operating at home to combine results with a club those people belonged to.  There was also a remarkable increase of at home stations known as "Delta" class for 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. Prior to COVID, these "D Class" stations averaged around 2,730 per year but now over the past few years it has increased to an average exceeding 6,802 with 2020 having a whopping 5,928. 

Our hope in doing something off grid and remote would attract more people back to a real field day. We were right.  With a total of 16 total visitors including our core team of 5, we did pretty well. For comparison, at a more central location the QSY Society had a total of 24 people and the Overlook Mountain Radio Club about the same.  This shows that if its clear something unique will be done, people will travel far. In our case, visitors from Long Island, Northern New Jersey and Connecticut made the trek in addition to those coming close from Ulster and Dutchess County.    The Overlook Mountain Amateur Radio Club also had some travelers visit them at Ferncliff Forest from as far away as Baltimore while they were in the area.  Most everyone at QSY Society was probably all within a thirty minute drive for some local comparisons.

Weather was horrible too!

We chose to not make use of any early setup rules on Friday ahead of the event, so we arrived at Vernooy Kill State Forest around 10:00 AM Saturday and deployed the camp.  Operating positions got set up quickly and only one antenna mast seemed to take more time than should have been needed while securing it to a nearby trail post kiosk. Everything else went together smoothly and Shane KD2YRB was first to make on the air contact at 2:07 PM on 20m and quickly followed by Brad KC2VVJ on 10m.  Due to visitor impacts,  we did not get the 15m and 40m stations focused yet until after dinner time Saturday when there was less commotion around our base of operations. 

Temperatures Saturday exceeded 95F with 70% humidity so priorities were getting set up quickly and safely. We also had to ensure there were no snakes looking for new vacation spots in our pop up ham radio village.

We had a great time and are looking forward to this event again come summer time in 2025.  Location is yet to be determined but likely will be in Dutchess County.