Your Feedback From WFD 2026

Log submissions are closed, and I'm going through the feedback forms you all filled out. There's a wealth of great stories, suggestions, criticisms, and reflections that we'll be poring over for the next few months as we get ready for WFD 2027. I want to share my initial thoughts as the guy who sorts and compiles the feedback for the board. This is far from final, and I won't cover every little thing here.

 

I want to thank everyone who gave us a summary of your operation. A major weather system slammed much of the Continental US and Canada with unusually cold and snowy weather exactly during Winter Field Day. Hearing about your WFD stations during this historic event means a lot, and you should be proud of what you accomplished.

 

Everyone who sends in a log gets an email with a link to the feedback form. We only got about 100 unique feedback entries out of almost 2600 log submissions. That's less than one half of one percent. Now many of you gave us your feedback on Facebook and Discord, a few others on Mastodon and Twitter, so we know that number is actually higher. But we would absolutely love to get many, many more feedback submissions next year. Even though it means more work for us, we'd love to see more feedback!

 

One thing a few people use the feedback form for every year is to request immediate assistance. We don't read the feedback until log submissions close, so those people go without help. Part of this is on us. We have a helpdesk email which is fairly new, but we didn't link it in our log submission email. We are also looking into getting an email notification for every feedback form entry, so we can address issues if they arise. If you're one of those folks, I'm sorry we didn't address your problem.

 

Now, onto the critical feedback. We really do like knowing where we can improve. Your suggestions, whether we incorporate them into WFD or not, are incredibly valuable in giving us a fuller picture of what participants want out of the event. Here are a few recurring comments and some quick replies.

 

• Logger issues:
• We don't accept paper logs. 
• Don't want to use log software? Write a Cabrillo file in a text editor using our published standard.
• "My favorite logger doesn't work for WFD". Let us know AND contact the logger's support system. Software companies respond to what their customers want. Not all of them are receptive to event organizers. Ask me how I know.

• The bulletin:
• A lot of folks who couldn't copy the CW or phone bulletin didn't even try the digital bulletin. It only takes a few minutes to set up a computer to decode data modes, and you'll have an option that works better in noise than the other two. Ignoring data modes comes at a price, y'all.
• We are aware of your complaints about the CW bulletin and will look at addressing them.
• "You should have more stations transmitting more times" I agree, and you can help by volunteering :)
• "You should transmit the bulletins at full legal limit" we already do when the station has the ability to.
• You can also copy the bulletin from another station that copied it, as long as you do it over amateur RF. That's in our FAQ. 

• Laptop power requirements: 
• Some of you found out this year that laptops are often very power hungry, and that stressed your alternative power systems beyond their limits.
• We don't require or even encourage you to use electronic logging for WFD. You can log on paper and transcribe the logs later.
• We won't be removing logging equipment from the alternative power requirement any time soon. Plan accordingly.

• FT8: No.

• Read the rules several times every year. A surprising amount of the feedback we get each year is addressed clearly in the rules. Some folks actually try to quote ARRL Field Day rules to us. We do try to make the rules more clear every chance we get, but you have to read and understand them.

We really do read and consider all your feedback. That doesn't mean we will incorporate it, but we will discuss it. Your voices are always heard, because you are the reason Winter Field Day happens. Thank you again for making WFD 2026 the biggest and best WFD yet!

72

Mike, KY4LV

FT2: A Brand New Mode You Can’t Use for Winter Field Day

There's a brand new mode that just hit the airwaves. It's based on FT8 and FT4. It's about four times as fast as FT8 with three times the bandwidth. It's called FT2, and it's being developed by Martino Merola, IU8LMC.

It runs on a modified version of WSJT-X, so there really are no surprises in store for FT8 users. If FT4 is the contest mode, FT2 is the sprint mode. Its lower sensitivity makes it less ideal for weak signal work, though it still competes with many other data modes. Its bandwidth is 150Hz, which is not particularly wide, but looks it compared to FT8 or JT9. What's really impressive is its 11 second QSO time. It's an absolute speed demon. Imagine a DXpedition working FT2 in Superfox mode, burning through contacts like crazy. I look forward to what the future holds for this mode.

However, that future doesn't include Winter Field Day. There's nothing about FT2 that makes it effective at passing emergency traffic. FT2 is not allowed for Winter Field Day, and we'll make that part of our rules for 2027 and beyond.

Want something similar for WFD? Try JS8Call in Turbo mode.

73

Mike, KY4LV

Winter Field Day Association 

Welcome to the Winter Field Blog

You spoke and we listened! A lot of you wanted us to add a page to our website where you can read announcements, updates, and other important information without going to any of our social media pages. As it turns out, that task was easier than we expected. Google Blogger (aka Blogspot) is free and integrates with our website adequately.

What should you expect here? All our most important updates! How do you get notified about them?
Well...

This is an authentic blog experience where you have to choose to visit a website to see if there are any new posts. If you want timely notifications, join one of our social media pages ☺

Anyway, if stay tuned for more content!

73
Mike Kelly
Winter Field Day Association 

Why do we exclude 60m and the WARC bands?

We get a variation of this one periodically:

"If you're not a contest, why do you not allow operation on the WARC bands?"

Because "being a contest" isn't the underlying reason events don't operate on those bands. Those bands are smaller than the "classic" bands and thus much more easily overrun during a large operating event. Most contests, QSO parties, sprints, whatever they're called, encourage people to make a lot of contacts in a short period of time. The informal agreement we've all made as stewards of the bands is to avoid WARC+60 for those events. 

It doesn't matter if Winter Field Day is a contest or not. We're not going to include those bands. People who don't want to do WFD should have a place to go to avoid the chaos.

"But if you're a real emergency preparedness exercise, shouldn't you allow all bands?" 

It's useful to have limitations in an exercise. Even if you ignore the very good reason I stated above, working around constraints makes better operators. 

Finally, I want to acknowledge an underlying reason why some people ask us this question. They are preoccupied with "proving" Winter Field Day is actually a contest, and they somehow think the entire WFDA board was born yesterday. We see what you're doing, and it's not changing anyone's mind.

73

Mike, KY4LV

Winter Field Day Association

Winter Field Day Is Now Held on the 4th Full Weekend in January

Some of you are undoubtedly saying to yourselves "What do you mean? That's when WFD has always been held!" It seems that way, but January usually has just four full weekends. We made this change to prevent Winter Field Day from falling on the occasional 5th full weekend.

As a result, Winter Field Day 2027 will be 23-24 January

 

Why We Don’t Allow FT8

Bottom Line Up Front: The reason we do not allow FT8 and other "WSJT modes" is because they do not pass emergency traffic effectively.

 

If that's good enough for you, you can stop reading. The rest is for people who need more than that.

 

Our exclusion of these modes is NOT because FT8 does not support the WFD exchange. It's true that FT8 does not support the WFD exchange. There's a lengthy conversation about that in a forum archive somewhere on the Internet. The gist is there's a technological limit to how many special exchanges those modes can support. Either way, even if FT8 did support the WFD exchange, we still wouldn't allow FT8.

 

Yes, we know about TX5. I've heard every variation of the TX5 macro argument. It's an ineffective way to convey more than a few letters and numbers. 

 

There's no one watching FT8 decodes for anything other than standard exchanges. You can hammer out any message you want - send 13 characters for 15 seconds, receive for 15 seconds, send another 13 characters for 15 seconds, receive for another 15 seconds (and over and over and over) - and there's no reason to believe any of those hundreds of people on 20m FT8 will notice.

 

I've read dozens of paragraphs from people steadfastly ignoring the reality of FT8 to advocate for its use in Winter Field Day. People have accused me and other WFDA board members of having a personal beef with Joe Taylor himself. We've been accused of having a bias against digital modes in general. We've straight up been called names and told we're not real field operators. We've seen it all.

 

If you made it this far and you still disagree with us, cool. We can just disagree. Want to boycott WFD over this? That's also a completely acceptable option.

 

Check out JS8Call instead of complaining to us about FT8. It'll be a better use of your time. 

 

73 

Mike, KY4LV

Winter Field Day Association

Winter Field Day ADIF Log Example

Greetings friends! Submitting your log is how you get credit for your Winter Field Day contacts. The good news is we don't require anything special from you. The bad news is not everyone knows the basics about log formats.

 

This post will show you an example of a properly formatted ADIF log file, and where you can go to get more information about this format. First, all this comes from the ADIF specification at: https://adif.org/. You can always refer back to there for authoritative ADIF information.

 

We require seven fields. Five of them are the minimum all ADIF logs require. The other two capture the WFD exchange:

• CALL 
• QSO_DATE 
• TIME_ON 
• BAND 
• MODE 
• CLASS 
• ARRL_SECT

 

Check out the example below.The field names MUST be correct to ensure correct log processing and QSO credit. For example, if your class data is in a field called FARTS instead of CLASS, our system may read your log as missing all class data and return zero QSOs. Incorrect field names are the most common reason for ADIF log rejection.

 

You can use ADIF Master to edit and validate your logs before submitting them. 

 

That's it. If you ever have trouble with your log, you can always email us at helpdesk@winterfieldday.com

 

Downloadable Example ADIF