April Fool's Field Day Newington, CT April 1, 2003 Following the ARRL's introduction of this year's "F" class for EOC stations, other classes have been proposed for future runnings of Amateur Radio's most popular on-the-air event. Given that most veteran operators have participated in one or more Field Days that fit these qualifications exactly, it may be that there will be more classes in next year's report. The proposed new classes are: Class J - an entry in this class indicates that all equipment used during Field Day was complete JUNK. 100 bonus points are available if any of the equipment actually catches fire or damages another piece of equipment. Class M - if your group MEANT to get on and had the best intentions of being active, but just couldn't get it together, send in a summary sheet for this class. No logs or dupe sheet are required. 200 bonus points if you forget to send in the summary, but meant to. Class T - also known as the "Little Red Hen" class, entries in Class T must show that 5% or less of the available operators actually did all the work while the rest stood around TALKING. Multiply score by 1.5 if less than 2% of the operators did all the work. Class Z(zzz) - Recognizing the trend as average operator age increases, this class is available to groups where everybody falls asleep after dinner on Saturday evening. Along with the new classes, additional Bonus Point awards are under evaluation: 25 points if any member can actually find an ARRL Radiogram form 5 points for each QSO using funny phonetics that actually make the responding operator laugh so hard that beverage squirts out his or her nose. Double points if they weren't drinking a beverage at the time. Double the QSO points for each contact made on an antenna that has fallen down without anybody noticing. Field Day brings out more operators every year. Recognition of the "real-world" situations can only serve to increase participation and reporting accuracy. 73 de KE9MA