Field Day 2026 is in the books. Over the last full weekend in June, the club operated four radio stations as a mobile emergency operations center from the pondside gazebo at La Junta City Park — EOC van, tower, and all. Setup started Saturday morning at 9am, and we ran continuously through Sunday morning. The event was open to the public, and our GET ON THE AIR (GOTA) station let unlicensed visitors sit down and work real contacts alongside a licensed operator. Refreshments and lunch held out the whole time we were on the air, exactly as promised.
The numbers
Our preliminary total score is 4,896 points. For comparison, last year’s final score of 3,606 placed us 3rd in the nation in our class — and assuming similar scores from other clubs this year, we’d finish solidly in second. We logged 926 contacts: 647 on phone, 267 on digital modes, and 12 on CW.
| Band | CW | Digital | Phone | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 40 m | 0 | 61 | 38 | 99 |
| 20 m | 7 | 126 | 528 | 661 |
| 15 m | 5 | 80 | 79 | 164 |
| 10 m | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
We worked 81 ARRL sections — contacts from coast to coast, with California, Ohio, and Florida topping the list, plus Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, six Canadian provinces, and a handful of DX. Not bad for a gazebo in the Arkansas Valley.
GOTA — new voices on the air
The GOTA station added contacts and bonus points from operators including Matthew Dormagen (KF0YVD) and unlicensed first-timers Parks Foote and Colt Hagans, among others. Special thanks to Kelly Block (KE0LLC) for coaching at the GOTA station all weekend — putting new people behind a microphone is half of what Field Day is for.
Looking ahead
From Tony’s (K0RPC) write-up to the club: we improved substantially on last year, but we’re probably near the limit of what we can do safely from the public park — future gains would come from more antenna separation, more low-band antennas, and different polarizations. Our other limiting factor is simply operators. In Tony’s words: “One contact or one hundred, your time behind a radio is very valuable — it gives someone a break, allows someone to help someone else, and keeps us on a frequency and on the air.”
A great big thank-you to everyone who helped set up and break down the operation — especially the Sunday morning pack-out crew, who arrived fresh just when the overnight operators were running on fumes. Some of us are die-hard, some of us are casual and just enjoy the camaraderie. It takes all types, and it takes all of you to make this club successful.
The weekend in pictures
And for the record books — the flyer that brought everyone out:
See you next June. And if you sat behind a radio this year — for one contact or a hundred — that was the whole point. 73!
