If you’re interested in amateur radio even a little bit, you’ll want to head out to Kent Park next weekend, June 28 to 29, 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. The ARRL, the National Association for Amateur Radio, describes Field Day as “a picnic, a camp out, practice for emergencies, an informal contest and, most of all, FUN!”
The challenge is simply to contact as many other stations as possible during a 24-hour window, overcoming any challenges thrown by weather or technical problems along the way.
After last year’s very successful effort, Field Day Chair Bob Karz is excited about this year’s possibilities.
He wrote,
Last year was quite spectacular for us. We made contacts in all 50 US states and every Canadian province plus several foreign countries to boot. We also had a record number of visitors which we hope to repeat this year.
Conditions for radio communications should again be excellent this year. We’ll continue using voice and Morse code of course but will have increased emphasis on computer based communications which accounted for nearly half our contacts last year.
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 last year’s Field Day.) Set-up will begin at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, June 28 and the exercise starts at 2 p.m. It continues through 2 p.m. on Sunday, and visitors can stop by anytime.
And visitors are more than welcome to stop by. 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 6/19/2025)
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