Check Out What’s New in 2025 for this Challenging and Rewarding Exercise
Winter Field Day (WFD)—ARRL Field Day’s frostier cousin—is scheduled for the weekend of January 25-26, 2025. It’s a great opportunity to flex your emergency operating muscles in less than hospitable environs, especially if you live in a colder climate like the hams at DX Engineering (QTH northeast Ohio).
Thinking of giving Winter Field Day a try? You’ll find everything you need for effective cold-weather portable ops—including portable antennas, transceivers, and DX Engineering logo knit caps to ward off the chill—at DXEngineering.com.
The first Winter Field Day was held in January 2007, and its original purpose and core principles remain the same. From the Winter Field Day website:
“We passionately believe that ham radio operators should practice portable emergency communications in winter environments as the potential for freezing temperatures, snow, ice, and other hazards present unique operational concerns. WFD is formatted to help increase your level of preparedness for disasters and improve your operational skills in subpar conditions.”
The WFD website lists some notable changes to the 2025 event:
- Event times have changed, and the event has been extended beyond 24 hours. The 30-hour operational period starts at 1600 UTC on Saturday (11 am EST) and ends at 21:59 UTC on Sunday (4:59 pm EST). Stations may begin setting up no earlier than 1600 UTC (11 am EST) on the Friday before. However, cumulative setup time shall not exceed 12 hours.
- Locations do not have to remain fixed during the entire event.
- Objectives (previously called bonuses) are now multipliers, and several objectives have been added. From the WFD website, “More than points, achieving objectives should be your primary goal during WFD. These objectives, combined with your own, should be your main focus during the exercise. As an incentive to focus on objectives, an Objective Multiplier (OM) has been assigned to each objective. To calculate an overall score, we will take your QSO Points and times them by your total OM. We will also record and track the percentage of objectives completed. It’s a great way to see how you did overall from year to year.”
Objectives for Winter Field Day include:
- Operating 100% on alternative power
- Operating away from home
- Deploying multiple antennas
- Making an FM satellite contact
- Making an SSB or CW satellite contact
- Sending and receiving at least one Winlink email
- Copying the Winter Field Day Special Bulletin
- Operating on at least six different bands
- Using multiple modes
- Operating the event QRP
- Operating six continuous hours during the event
To learn much more about these changes and to register your club, visit the WFD website.
