ARRL Field Day this year starts at 1100 PDT June 27 and ends at 1359 PDT June 28th. Due to COVID-19 YARG will not be hosting a Field Day site this year. Instead, club members are invited to participate from home. For this Field Day only, the ARRL has approved a Rule Waiver, and will allow Class D stations to contact other Class D stations.
Temporary rule waiver: For Field Day 2020 only, Class D stations may work all other Field Day stations, including other Class D stations, for points. Class D stations ordinarily may only count contacts made with Class A, B, C, E, and F Field Day stations, but the temporary rule waiver for 2020 allows Class D stations to count contacts with other Class D stations for QSO credit.
http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Field-Day/2020/2020%20Field%20Day%20Packet%20Rev%20a.pdf
Class D stations are Home Stations operating from commercial power.
Allowed Bands
Only the 160, 80, 40, 20, 15, and 10 Meter HF bands, as well as all bands 50MHz and above are allowed in Field Day.
Setup
If you are using your home station with either Battery or Commercial power, then you don’t need to worry about setup. Just go ahead and start operating at 1100 PDT on June 27th. You can operate for the entire period up until 1359 PDT on June 28th.
If you will be in the field setting up, then there are some restrictions. If you begin setup at 1100 PDT on June 27th, then you may work the entire period up until 1359 PDT on June 28th. If you begin setup prior to 1100 PDT on June 27th, then you may only operate for a total of 24 hours.
I doubt many of us operating solo will run afoul of these rules.
What Call Sign do I use?
As per the ARRL, you should use your own personal Call Sign. Home Stations operating with Club Call Signs are not allowed. When submitting your logs, you can enter your Club information (see Reporting) and the ARRL will use that to calculate the Club score.
Station Class
Since we will not be getting together as a group this year, we will NOT be using the Alpha designation. Instead you will need to evaluate your plans to select the proper category for your station.
- Class B – One or Two person Portable
- Class B Battery – One or Two person Portable. 5 watts or less, and no commercial power or motor driven generator.
- Class C – Mobile. Stations operated from a vehicle (includes maritime and aeronautical mobile).
- Class D – Home Station. Your normal home station connected to commercial power.
- Class E – Home Station on Emergency Power. This includes generators, as long as the radio and everything connected to to it is using Emergency Power.
Exchange
If you are operating from Yelm or the surrounding communities, then you are working from the Western Washington Section. Therefore you are in WWA or “Western Washington” for purposes of the exchange. The exchange takes the form of the number of Transmitters you are using, your class, and your section.
Examples for single Transmitter stations are below.
| Class | CW or Digital | Phone |
| B | 1B WWA | One Bravo Western Washington |
| C | 1C WWA | One Charlie Western Washington |
| D | 1D WWA | One Delta Western Washington |
| E | 1E WWA | One Echo Western Washington |
Reporting
Reporting for Field Day is not required, but if you do decide to report their are many options to do so, from the web or email to submitting physical logs via the mail. However you choose to report, it must be postmarked or submitted no later than Tuesday, July 28th, 2020. Late entries will not be accepted.
You can submit a Cabrillo log from your logging software, or a list of stations worked by band/mode along with a dupe sheet sorted by band and mode. The web entry is located at http://field-day.arrl.org/fdentry.php. You can either submit a Cabrillo log or hand enter the data.
Also for this year, you can submit your logs and add your associated Club (for YARG, it should be entered as “Yelm Amateur Radio Group”) and points will be shared between your individual entry and the Club. In order for results to be tabulated correctly, all club participants must enter the club’s official name exactly the same, avoiding abbreviations or acronyms. This is important!
For full details on Field Day rules and submitting logs, please see the Official ARRL Field Day Packet.
