W8USR - Special Events
Ice Station WØJH – SARA Portable Winter Activation
About the Special Event
From February 16 to February 18, 2019, station W8USR tracked and logged a unique winter operations milestone by contacting special event station WØJH. This annual three-day event was organized and conducted by the members of the Stillwater Minnesota Amateur Radio Association (SARA). To break the absolute monotony of long regional winters, club operators deployed a pair of fully operational portable field stations straight onto the frozen surface of Lake Elmo, Minnesota, situated in Washington County (Grid Square EN34nx), roughly 10 miles east of downtown St. Paul. Marking SARA's sixth consecutive year of ice operations, two-person operator and logger teams rotated shifts for approximately six hours per day under harsh winter elements, generating significant multi-band pile-ups and logging an impressive 677 total contacts across the United States, Canada, and various international DX entities.
Field Infrastructure & Antenna Layouts
The SARA club successfully maintained a robust, dual-station communication footprint running entirely off portable propane heating architectures:
- Primary Ice Shelter Station: Comprising an 8x8-foot portable shelter sitting directly atop two full feet of solid ice. This bench run utilized a Kenwood TS-590 transceiver pushing 100 watts into an MFJ-986 manual antenna tuner. The system matched into a massive 160-6 meter center-fed Zepp antenna spanning 253 feet long, suspended 45 feet high running north and south through shoreline trees. The layout was fed via 100 feet of 450-ohm ladder line coupled to a 4:1 voltage balun and coaxial terminal lines.
- Secondary Shoreline Station: A new addition for the 2019 deployment, utilizing a 6x12-foot enclosed utility trailer parked on the immediate shore a few hundred feet from the lake shelter. This position ran an Icom IC-7300 base station at 100 watts, matched out to a 90-foot end-fed sloper antenna utilizing an Icom AH-4 automatic antenna tuner.
Active Field Deployments & Roster
All logging was managed live via field laptops to capture pile-up contacts under intense cold conditions. Operations predominantly focused on single-sideband (SSB) phone modes across the 20, 40, and 75-meter HF bands. The primary SARA operator and logger roster for this winter deployment included: KDØIPI, KEØQQN, KEØQQM, AAØU, KØGW, KØAIF, NØDRX, WØGAF, and WØOXB.
Station Log: Contact History
| Date | Special Event Call | My Callsign | Time (UTC) | Frequency / Band | Mode | Signal Report (r/s) | Operational QTH Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| February 18, 2019 | WØJH | W8USR | 17:23 UTC | 7.250 MHz (40 Meters) | SSB | 59 / 59 | SARA • Lake Elmo (Washington County), MN |