FIELD DAY 2002

The last weekend of June, a couple dozen local hams and others came out to the woods to practice emergency communication skills and have a great time
in the fresh air and sunshine (though it was awfully dusty after months with no rain). NADXA once again collaborated with the Coconino Amateur Radio
Club to stage this year's Field Day operation. We were in a different QTH than in recent years, however, as the Forest Service had closed down access to
all the national forest lands due to extreme fire danger. In fact, we could see the smoke from the 460,000-acre Rodeo-Chediski fire on the eastern horizon
the whole weekend. Nonetheless, our site at Mormon Lake campground worked out quite well.
We operated under the club call sign, W7TB, in category 2A. As usual, we ran a full-time CW station and a full-time SSB station, as well another SSB station
that alternated between 6 meters when that band was open and the HF bands, serving as our GOTA ("Get On The Air") station; GOTA was a new feature of
FD2002. Saturday evening was highlighted by Chef Bob's (N7FVK) renowned big barbecue, ensuring that no Field Day participants went away hungry. Several
visitors stopped by during Field Day, hopefully a little more aware of Amateur Radio's capabilities for emergency communication. And how did it all turn out
once the Field Day dust had settled? Well, conditions were lousy on the HF bands (due to low solar flux and high geomagnetic activity) until about sundown
Saturday, but we came close to 2000's club-record score (5926) anyway. Here's the breakdown:

HF-CW	1812 points	906 QSOs
HF-SSB	548 points	548 QSOs
6-meter SSB	14 points	14 QSOs
GOTA Station HF-SSB	179 points	179 QSOs
Total QSO points	2553 points
Power Multiplier (x2)	5106 Points	low power (<150w)
+ Claimed Bonuses	700 points
TOTAL SCORE	5806 points