Pictured are Bruce Snow at the radio with Jeff Benson logging all contacts made.
Courtesy | Herb Baldwin
Members of the Morrow County Amateur Radio Association will once again be participating in the national Amateur Radio Field Day exercise starting at noon on Saturday, June 24. The 24-hour operation, which will be held at the Morrow County Headwaters Outdoor Education Center at 151 Home Road in Mount Gilead, will finish up by noon on Sunday, June 25.
The public is invited to come on out and visit for a bit to see what “ham” radio is all about, listen to the operators make contact with other stations all across the globe, and see what sort of equipment, antennas and power sources are commonly used for emergency communications.
Since 1933, ham radio operators across North America have established temporary ham radio stations in public locations during field day to showcase the science and skill of amateur radio. This event is open to the public and all are encouraged to attend.
For over 100 years, amateur radio (sometimes 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, 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.
Ham radio can function 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.
Anyone may become a licensed amateur radio operator. There are over 725,000 licensed hams in the United States with over 3,000,000 worldwide, as young as 5 and as old as 100. And with clubs such as The Morrow County Amateur Radio Association, it’s easy for anybody to get involved right here in Morrow County.
For more information about field day, visit www.arrl.org/what-is-ham-radio or email Jeff Benson at [email protected].
Submitted by Herb Baldwin.
