Ham radio ‘Field Day’ taking place this weekend
Members of the Humboldt Amateur Radio Club are participating in the national Amateur Radio Field Day this weekend. Due to the COVID-19 virus, operators this year will be taking part from their home stations.
For more than 100 years, amateur radio — also called ham radio — has allowed people from all walks of life to experiment with electronics and communications techniques, as well as provide a free public service to their communities during a disaster or emergency, all without needing a cell phone or the internet. Field Day demonstrates ham radio’s ability to work reliably under any conditions from almost any location and create an independent communications network. More than
Pictured is a glimpse of a past Humboldt Amateur Radio Club “Field Day.” This year’s event is taking place at operators’ homes due to the pandemic.
35,000 people from thousands of locations participated last year in Field Day 2019 activities.
“It’s easy for anyone to pick up a computer or
smartphone, connect to the Internet and communicate, with no knowledge of how the devices function or connect to each other,” said David Isgur, communications manager for the American Radio Relay League, the national association for Amateur Radio. “But, if there’s an interruption of service or you’re out of range of a cell tower, you have no way to communicate. Ham radio functions completely independent of the internet or cell phone infrastructure, can interface with tablets or smartphones, and can be set up almost anywhere in minutes. That’s the beauty of amateur radio during a communications outage.”
Anyone may become a licensed amateur radio operator. There are more than 725,000 licensed hams in the United States, as young as 8 and as old as 100.
For more information about Field Day or amateur radio, contact www. humboldt-arc.org or visit www.arrl.org/what-isham-radio.