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OLDTOWN - The Bonner County Amateur Radio Club and Bonner County Amateur Radio Emergency Service are hosting ARRL Amateur Radio Field Day 2024 at House of the Lord Church, in Oldtown on Saturday, June 22 from noon to 4 p.m. The free event is open to the public.
Field Day is the single-most popular amateur radio operating event of the year in the U.S. and Canada. Around 35,000 radio amateurs (and the friends and families of many of them) head out into the field to make as many contacts as they can in a 24-hour period.
The group essentially take wooded areas, turns them into independent portable communications centers with world-wide communications capabilities for the weekend, and then turns them back into wooded areas on Sunday afternoon.
Ham radio is a popular hobby and is used around the world to assist with emergencies and non-emergencies; public events such as charity rides, bike races, parades, marathons.
Stop by on Saturday and you too can Get On The Air (GOTA). People do not have to be a member of any amateur radio club. You do not even have to be a licensed ham. In fact, people who aren’t licensed, hams licensed since the last Field Day (at the end of June 2023), and licensed hams who haven’t been on HF recently. This station will be used to introduce people to operating in the high frequency bands to and maybe get them back in the game or introduce them to the HF world of communications. Last year, a young man was able to get on the air and was able to contact his grandmother in another station who was participating in Field Day with her club.
This is an opportunity to check out what ham radio is all about, talk with some experienced operators and even help with getting some contacts with other hams around the country. Club members will give people a quick lesson. Each station has a Captain, in charge of that station’s operations, and generally has a radio operator and a logger (using a laptop computer) at each station, so after observing a while, people can begin doing logging. Simple, just typing into the laptop. Then, after participating up close, people can slide into the operator’s chair and make contacts yourself.
For more information, contact Mark Earls, 208610-6510 or [email protected].
