If you’re interested in amateur radio even a little bit, you’ll want to head out to Kent Park this weekend, June 22 to 23, to check out the annual XRX Amateur Radio Club Field Day. It’s a day when radio operators from all over the area come together to practice their skills totally “off the grid.”
Held on the fourth weekend in June every year, Field Day is an nationwide event, held simultaneously with 1000 similar stations across the US and Canada over a 24-hour period and involving more than 30,000 radio amateurs. Operators communicate via voice, Morse code and computers connected to transmitters.
On Field Day, operators are challenged to transport their equipment away from their homes, set up in a park or remote area, rebuild their stations, put up antennas and broadcast in quasi-emergency conditions, without drawing electricity from RG&E or using the internet or cell phones.
ARRL, the National Association for Amateur Radio, describes Field Day as the “single most popular on-the-air event held annually in the US and Canada.”
They add,
Field Day is a picnic, a camp out, practice for emergencies, an informal contest and, most of all, FUN! It is a time where many aspects of Amateur Radio come together to highlight our many roles. While some will treat it as a contest, other groups use the opportunity to practice their emergency response capabilities.
The challenge is simply to contact as many other stations as possible during the 24-hour window, which begins Saturday at 2 p.m. and continues overnight through Sunday at 2 p.m., overcoming any challenges thrown by weather or technical problems along the way.
This year’s Field Day will feature a brand new twist, called a “fox hunt.” In this case, the “fox” is a hidden miniature radio transmitter, and the object is to use radio-location to find it. Field Day Chair Bob Karz explains that “the skills we develop (in the fox hunt) help us identify and track down interference, deliberate or otherwise, with our communications. Indeed, we used our fox hunting skills this past year to track down deliberate interference with some of our equipment.”
Bob also said that, surprisingly, the intense solar activity that led to the spectacular auroras last month and temporarily disrupted radio communications world-wide actually improves radio communications the rest of the time. So they’re expecting make even more contacts this year than usual.
The XRX Radio Club will be operating from the lower soccer fields of Kent Park on Schlegel Rd. The club typically sets up several broadcast stations, complete with generators, computers, transmitters, and all manner of antennas. (Click here to check out the blog I wrote about 2021’s Field Day.)
Visitors are more than welcome to stop by. Equipment set-up will begin at 10 a.m. on Saturday and the exercise begins at 2 p.m., running through 2 p.m. Sunday. These radio amateurs are always happy to share their passion with interested onlookers, and you may even get the chance to make an “on-the-air” contact yourself.
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(posted 6/16/2024)
webster on the web 
Just such a beautiful article. Love it ❤️