Like much of the country, Kansas City had a brutal winter storm this weekend. We spent all day Saturday snowed in at home, but this morning I was able to walk out to the local city park to do a quick outdoor activation for Winter Field Day.
This was definitely an outdoor winter radio experience – the air temperature was around 5 degrees Fahrenheit, with a light breeze to make things even colder. I stayed out for ~45 minutes, and got around 25 contacts.
The noise floor was a little high for some reason, so I was having problems hearing weaker signals. Other than that, the radio and antenna worked fine in the cold. They had been sitting indoors at room temperature immediately before I took them out, so I’m not sure how they would have worked if they had “cold soaked” for a few hours first. Something to try next time, I guess.
The main thing I learned is that I need some better gloves. I wore a thin pair of REI gloves so I could write, but my fingers quickly got too cold to be usable unless I kept my hand mostly in the sleeve of my jacket. I also couldn’t use my phone while wearing the gloves, and they kept getting stuck on the various Velcro bits of my kit.