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ARRL Field Day 2019

Thanks to all who participated and visited our Field day event this year!

Below we have a number of items from our Field Day this year. 

 

 

More items will be added as they become available.

 

Amateur Radio Emergency Exercise - Public Invited

With increasingly severe weather events and other disasters featured prominently in the news, it is comforting to know that groups and agencies all over Dane County continue to practice and improve their responses to these emergencies. Our local Amateur Radio community, and around the country actively prepares as well.

Each year since 1933 Amateur Radio operators have set aside a weekend at the end of June to practice emergency responsiveness and to showcase the science and skill of Amateur Radio. This year the Four Lakes Amateur Radio Club (FLARC), with members all over Dane County will participate with hams all over North America in the Amateur Radio Field Day exercise June 22-23. We set up at Badger Prairie Park in Verona starting at 1:00 pm on Saturday afternoon and then operate for 24 hours from 1:00 pm Saturday to 1:00 pm Sunday. “For 24 hours we turn a park shelter into a communications hub and we communicate with stations all over North America and around the globe,” said Jeff Fillian, a member of the FLARC Board. “It helps up hone our craft and is an opportunity to make the public aware of this capability. It is Ham Radio’s open house.”

For more than 100 years, Amateur Radio — also called ham radio — has allowed people from all walks of life to experiment with electronics and communications techniques, as well as provide a free public service to their communities during a disaster or emergency, all without needing a cell phone or the Internet. Field Day demonstrates ham radio’s ability to work reliably under any conditions from almost any location and create an independent communications network. More than 35,000 people from thousands of locations participated last year in Field Day 2018 activities.

“It’s easy for anyone to pick up a computer or smartphone, connect to the Internet and communicate, with no knowledge of how the devices function or connect to each other,” said David Isgur, communications manager for the American Radio Relay League, the national association for Amateur Radio. “But if there’s an interruption of service or you’re out of range of a cell tower, you have no way to communicate. Ham radio functions completely independent of the Internet or cell phone infrastructure, can interface with tablets or smartphones, and can be set up almost anywhere in minutes. That’s the beauty of Amateur Radio during a communications outage.

“Hams can literally throw a wire in a tree for an antenna, connect it to a battery-powered transmitter, and communicate halfway around the world,” Isgur added. “In today’s electronic do-it-yourself (DIY) environment, ham radio remains one of the best ways for people to learn about electronics, physics, meteorology, and numerous other scientific disciplines. In addition, amateur radio is a huge asset to any community during disasters or emergencies if the standard communication infrastructure goes down.”

You are invited to stop by, see, hear, touch and ask questions anytime during the event. For more information visit our Field Day web page at http://bit.ly/2019FD

 

For more information contact our Public Information Officer:

Jeff Fillian
kc9unz@arrl.net
262.229.9523

We will be tweeting and posting this year as #ARRLFD  and #FLARCFD. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

#FLARCFD
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