Winter Field Day is always the last full weekend in January. This year it was on Saturday, January 25  and Sunday, January 26, 2025. It started at 1600 UTC on Saturday (11 am EST), the 25th, and ended at 21:59 UTC on Sunday, the 26th (4:59 pm EST).  We operated from the US Coast Guard Aux. station on Harbor Dr. S. in Venice as usual again this year. But this location was anything but “usuals” this year. The Air Force had been on the site building the long awaited new radar installation since October and our access to the open field area for erecting antennas was severley limited.

Our great event managers, Jim N7JIM and Frank W2XYZ did a fantastic job or organizingand overseeing the placement of TARC temporary antennas in the limited space available. Working from inside the Coast Guard Aux. building was also a bit of a challenge this year as we discovered that the building does not have any heating system. In all of our past activations from this site, the buildings AC system was a welcome addition to operations but this weekend had two of the coldest days of the year and operators had to bundle up a bit to be comfortable.

We had Paul Carlson, VE7ZWZ from British Columbia Canada stop in on Saturday afternoon and again Saturday night.  He Sat down and did some logging for an hour. Paul was on vacation in the area. A large contingent of club members departed from our Friday morning breakfast meeting at Perkins to help rearrange furniture, install a ground system and power system, and to set up a SSB, CW, and HF/Satellite operating stations for the event. The club’s BudiHex antenna and the new TARC automatic tracking satellite antenna array where also setup in the open field area around the building.

Steve NS4P debuted the new TARC automatic tracking satellite antenna array purchased with ARRL Club Grant funding for use at the Pine View School. This was the first use of the newly assembled system and it worked flawlessly. Steve made 17 satellite contacts on FM and SSB during the vent to obtain 6 valuable multipliers for our score! A number of club members received an orientation to satellite comms in general and in the use of our new automatic tracking system.

The combination CW and digital station racked up an impressive 324 CW contacts and 37 PSK31 contacts during the event. Pictured at left are Frank W2XYZ and Bob KM2T in the foreground and Tom K7ONE and John N3PQD in the background. All totaled with contacts and multipliers, the club achieved a score of 29,020 points for our participation in Winter Field Day, 2025. We submitted out logs and report to the organizers on February 1st but the results usually take months to consolidate and aren’t published until sometime in the summer so we won’t know how well we did section, state, or nation-wide for a while.

Pictured at left are Jon W4OMX as the operator of the SSB station used for the event and to his right is Shaun KO4YAX who is logging the contacts being made. Overall for the weekend TARC made 717 SSB contacts. Thanks go out to all the club members who helped setup, operate, and tear down the TARC Winter Field Day 2025 operation. Without club participation and interest, events like this and our stellar performance could not be achieved.

very 73, Frank W2XYZ and Jim N7JIM