W2IK | 
06 26th, 2011| 
A little different, but successful none the less, we operated using solar charged battery power in a very minimalistic Field Day using very little in the way of equipment. This was a test of our operating skills as much as it was a test of setting up an emergency station and all worked well.
We used a multi-band “inverted V” antenna that worked fantastic. When band changes were in order, all we had to do was unplug/plug band extensions which, being at the lower ends of the V, were easy to accomplish. This kept the loss from using a tuner, with this antenna we didn’t need one, to zero which is advantageous when you run low power. (A tuner usually has a 2db insertion loss! This is also why you don’t use a tuner if your swr is 1.5 : 1. It isn’t worth the insertion loss.)
Running just one station, we managed a little over 530 SSB and 48 CW contacts, all by W2IK, for a total of 578 Qs which was down from last year. This year, it was not a W5BOG operation. Krissy, again, was the chef of the operation, keeping me fat and happy!
Some observations from this operation were: 15 meters was “long and hard” – this means the band was open for working distant stations (long) with no signal fading (hard) and we were hit with DX such as KH6EL whom we worked using only 5 watts with an actual (honest) 5/9 return from him. 10 meters was open at mid-day, but we couldn’t get the distant stations we wanted to. 20 meters was open until daylight hours waned, growing “legs” for a while into the pacific and then it opened in a sporadic manner later.
