westphals.net Three Boys, Mom, and Dad

Amateur (Ham) Radio Field Day is an annual event sponsored by the American Radio Relay League. Groups of ham radio operators get together to practice their emergency communication skills and have fun all around the US and Canada. The goal is to setup a radio operation in a field, pavilion, or some sort of temporary location and exchange information on-the-air with as many other groups as possible.

Linda and I used to participate in Field Day with the Edison Radio Amateurs Association (ERAA). That was the ham radio club affiliated with Detroit Edison. That club folded sometime around 1999 or 2000. Since then we haven't been to a Field Day until now.

Field Day is always the fourth full weekend in June. This year Kieran and I helped out and participated in Field Day with the ARROW club in Ann Arbor. I went out on Friday evening and helped setup the antennas. Then Kieran and I both went back Saturday afternoon. We setup our tent and stayed overnight through to the end.

The ARROW Field Day operation was at Dominos Farms. It consisted of four regular stations. Two of them were doing voice communication and two of them were doing CW (morse code). There was also a fifth station operating in the VHF and higher range working a mixture of modes and bands. In the pictures it's the one with the tall tower next to it.

There was one additional station called GOTA which is short for Get On The Air. This is something new since the ERAA days. It's meant to get nonlicensed people as well as inactive licensed hams on the air. Since it had been well over the two year minimum time since I last made any contacts via ham radio I qualified to operate the GOTA station. I also volunteered to be a GOTA Coach and help the inexperienced operators work the equipment. Kieran spent lots of time running the radio and the logging computer. It was fun coaching him through it. Linda and the twins came up Sunday morning to visit. If she'd had more time Linda would have gotten into the operators chair too. It's always helpful to have a woman's voice on the air.

There was excellent food available throughout the entire event. It was prepared by George, K9TRV. Everybody agreed that he did an outstanding job. Nobody was ever hungry.

I was really impressed by the inviting atmosphere that the ARROW group created. Kieran and I were welcome from the very beginning. There was a good combination of fun and contesting spirit all over the field. A special thanks go the Jim, K8ELR and Dan, KB6NU. They were the other GOTA coaches and helped Kieran and I get going.

The actual on-the-air portion of Field Day ran from 2:00 pm Saturday to 2:00 pm Sunday. When the final contact was made and the stations were shutdown it was time to pack everything up. The ARROW group impressed again. Everybody seemed to know what needed to be done and the whole field was pretty much packed up in a couple of hours.

As always, I can't wait for next year.