... the morning path to the east coast from EWA opened up, plus I think the east coast ops were willing to dig out the QRP stations because they had too in order to maintain QSO rate...
I usually work the East Coast from NW Oregon, especially
New England, even running QRP (on CW). One year my
opening contact was Vermont on 40m, at 11 AM PDT.
I often make a game of trying to work all 50 states on
Field Day. The best I’ve done is 47, running QRP to
dipoles, and operating for about 8 hours.
I prefer to use vertically polarized antennas for 40 & 80 meters. To get a 40 or 80 meter horizontally polarized antenna a 1/2 wavelength high is very challenging under field day conditions.
Tall trees help, but that’s where the ground slope is important.
Sloping ground lowers the angle of radiation in the downhill
direction. As a rough estimate, think of it as tilting the
radiation pattern by the slope angle. It’s not that simple,
and the slope has to continue for some distance for it to
be effective. It also requires having the antennas near
the edge of the slope, or at least close enough to it that
the RF at the desired angle misses the local ground.
Our 40m antennas are usually up 50-60’ in the trees,
and that works pretty well. I’m not a night owl, and
rarely use 80m on Field Day, but our late shift SSB
operators are mostly working the western half of the
country, so low angle isn't as important.
...Achieving 33 ft high with a 10-20M yagi is very doable.
We usually put my TA-33jr up at 28’ or 32’ using the 4’
heavy aluminum military mast sections. Goes up easily
with 2-3 people. I as going to see if I could do it by
myself one year, but when someone offered to help, I
wasn’t going to refuse.