Field Day for the Athens Radio Club in 2025 was held at Red Canna Park in Colbert.

This was our first time having Field Day at this site, but we had a good turnout for setup and had no issues being ready by 2pm for the start of the event. We operated with 3 transmitters on battery power with an additional GOTA (Get on the Air) station as well. We had a tremendous overall turnout to the site with 45 people signing the log for the event. I know we had a few more as well. This is the most participation we have had compared to the past few years. We also had a lot of youth participation as well. The GOTA was popular with 10 individuals under the age of 18 making at least one contact. We also had 90 total QSOs from 13 participants on the GOTA station, which is the most that I have seen at the club's field day. Getting the young people on the air is one of the most important things we can do on Field Day to keep the hobby growing.

For the event we operated on four bands - 15, 20 40 and 80 and 3 modes - FT4/FT8, CW and SSB. We did some experimenting this year with antenna placement and had some mild success operating different modes on the same band at the same time. A little more work to do there to get it right for next year. We had a good turnout for radio operations this year. Everybody who wanted to operate had plenty of opportunities. We also had friendly encouragement to help those who do not operate a lot out in some work on the radio. As for contacts, we made a total of 1,096. We finally broke the 1,000 QSO mark! We had 102 on CW, 127 on Digital and 867 on SSB. This is the second year in a row that we have a lot of CW contacts. Thanks to Tom (N4TTU) and Scott (KW4NJA) for helping us out there. Also, thanks to Jess (N4JAH) for putting in the extra work on SSB to get us those high numbers as well. The overall score for the club was 4,450, which is the highest point total we have produced. Once again great work by everybody. 

Over the past few years, we have been working on improving our Field Day event and trying to make it enjoyable for all. There has been a lot of work done by the club to make sure we have all the gear needed - radios, antenna, coax, tents, etc. and it has paid off because we are far more organized and can pull off an event this size much easier than in years past. We also have worked on making sure that we have plenty of food for the event. This year was no exception. Once again, I would like to thank everyone who participated, planned, helped with setup, helped with food prep. It takes all of us to make a great event. I hope that everyone who came out for the event enjoyed themselves enough to want to come back again. As always, we will be back at it next year on the third full weekend of June. Go ahead and mark your calendars now, you do not want to miss out. If you have any comments, ideas or suggestions for Field Day, don't hesitate to reach out and let me know.

 Thanks,

Colin - KO4IZK