Categories
Ham Radio Operating

ARRL Field Day

[Saturday: 7 miles; today: rest day]

Starting at noon yesterday was the annual ARRL Field Day ham radio event.

The idea of Field Day is to take your equipment out to a field location, set up some temporary means to work radio, operate for a day and then take it down.  It is to support the disaster preparedness aspect of ham radio.

But it also is a vehicle for a club activity.  We have a very active ham radio club in Lowndes County, with our own radio set-up in a building in town.

I went in about 4 in the afternoon yesterday and operated until almost midnight.  I did take a break when a thunderstorm came through.  I went back in for another hour this morning to get our total of CW (morse code) contacts up to 100.  That is not a high number, but it’s not bad for what we were doing.

Various people in the club brought in food and drink.  Some operated and some just visited.

I haven’t been doing a lot of ham radio recently.  I surprise myself because that has been my main hobby for the last few years.  I still like it and I still intend to do it.  But my radio thinking has been focused on the new LPFM radio station project.  I would really like to get moving over the hurdle of initial startup-funding for the LPFM station.  But it hasn’t happened yet.  And that has me a bit stymied in the other radio project areas too, it seems.