Portable. Battery. Public site.
Class 5A· Mission alignment
TBARC's 2025 Field Day was the club's first fully portable battery-powered operation — ARRL Class 5A, a public field site, and the kind of emergency-prep exercise Field Day was designed to be. The score dipped slightly; the bonus paper trail nearly doubled.
The story in five bullets
The 2025 Field Day in numbers
Per the ARRL: 4,373 entries from all 85 sections; 31,919 participants; 1.2 million QSOs. Entries up ~1% from 2024; total QSOs down 8% as solar conditions softened the higher HF bands for many operators.
Top 24% of Class 5A nationwide
92 clubs filed Class 5A in 2025. W7TBC landed at #22 — top quarter of the class — and the only AZ-section 5A entry. The top of the column is dominated by generator-powered clubs running 2,000+ QSOs; TBARC was the only battery-powered entry in the national top 25.
AZ #7 · Top 7% of the section
Arizona had 107 Field Day entries in 2025. TBARC landed at #7on the section leaderboard. The clubs above us all ran significant CW operations (W8TK 1,415, K7K 845, WA7NB 1,001, KC7V 1,079) — CW is the single biggest leverage point we've identified for 2026.
20m phone carried the operation
438 of the 471 phone QSOs landed on 20m SSB — 93% of the phone column on a single band. 15m and 10m phone were thin; 80m was digital-only via the FT8 station. The portable antenna farm favored 20m hard.
Zero CW · the 2026 leverage point
A 5A operation with zero CW is rare at the top of the leaderboard. Every AZ club ranked above us ran significant CW — and CW counts double the per-QSO value of phone. Recruiting or developing one dedicated CW operator for 2026 is the highest-leverage move on the board.
Eight operators ran the main station
From the main-station ADIF (779 QSOs). N0SNO carried 55% of the load — heroic, but also the bus-factor risk we'll address in 2026 by spreading the operator schedule across 3-5 ops at 150-200 each.
1,680 bonus points — nearly double 2024
The class shift to 5A on battery unlocked four large new bonuses: 100% Emergency Power (500), Safety Officer for Class A (100), Public Location (100), and Alternate Power (100). Combined with continued strong civic-engagement claims, the 2025 bonus haul leads Arizona.
2026 score targets
Hold the bonus column. Recruit a CW operator for the +400 to +800 score swing. Close the Sunday 07:00-12:00 UTC dead zone with a skeleton digital shift. Goal: 5,000+ final score, AZ top 5, national 5A top 15.