American Radio Relay League Field Day

In the past, ham radio has been mostly been considered a senior male's game, but more and more younger people are seriously picking up on the hobby. This includes both girls and boys, young men and young women. It can be essential in times of emergencies because it works when other forms of communications don't. All of the radios are capable (and frequently are) of being operated on 12 volt batteries, solar, wind power, or a generator. When possible, most of the computers used were being run by a generator or battery instead of using mains power for the entire length of the event. The exception is that we generally run commercial power to the computer displaying the electronic map and the router handling the network of a number of computers.

We didn't really take any photos from 2023 and 2024, but we were still out there. 2025 was a little different. We had a new member, Jeramiah (KD9CCW - pictured below) who nailed this one. He didn't need a logger, just the logging program. He had pileups that were over six deep at times. And he was FAST! He ended up logging 452 contacts out of the 477 we logged total for the club. His last entry was at about 4:30 AM on Sunday, June 29 and that was the last entry made by the club during the contest. Our total score for the event was 1904 since we ran everything on either a generator or battery power and was a 5A station. Yes, the other tranceivers were on but there was very little logged with them, likely due to antenna issues or band conditions.

Because of the "CoVid-19 "pandemic," we weren't able to do Field Day from our usual place. Instead, Tony Cline was gracious enough to let us use his barn to operate in. For the a first time, it wasn't too bad, but we did learn that a steel barn isn't the greatest to put an antenna in. We really were in it for the fun. Had a few great cookouts and Tony and his family cooked up a great pot of ham and beans along with corn bread and watermelon. How can you beat that? Thanks, Tony! And thanks to Rick Wagaman for providing the photos. By the way, looks like Google isn't doing the slide show like are on the other photos at the moment. I'll be trying to improve this display as time goes on. Meanwhile, it's possible to add comments to the photos.