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As Spring turns to Summer, a young ham’s fancy turns towards…Field Day! The annual ARRL Field Day emergency preparedness exercise/contest/social event is Saturday June 23rd and Sunday June 24th. As usual, SPARC is participating in this event but this year, we are building upon the success of the Winter Field Day event with a joint Field Day operation with the Clearwater Amateur Radio Society and Upper Pinellas Amateur Radio Club. The event will be held at the Clearwater Fire Training Center on Belcher Road in Clearwater.
For those that may not be familiar with Field Day, Field Day is an annual operating event sponsored by the ARRL. From the ARRL website,
“Field Day is ham radio’s open house. Every June, more than 40,000 hams throughout North America set up temporary transmitting stations in public places to demonstrate ham radio’s science, skill and service to our communities and our nation. It combines public service, emergency preparedness, community outreach, and technical skills all in a single event. Field Day has been an annual event since 1933, and remains the most popular event in ham radio.
What you can do right now is to sign-up. We need people to setup, operate, tear-down and ready to have fun. We will be running three simultaneous stations with one station dedicated to CW and the others as SSB and PSK-31. We will have a satellite station and a vast array of different antenna types. Taking advantage of the training facilities, we are setting up temporary antennas but operating from inside in the classrooms. This makes the FLorida heat a bit more comfortable. The clubs are providing meals and drinks throughout the weekend but all are asked to bring a dish to share for Saturday evening. We start setup at 8:00 AM on Saturday June 23 and start operating at 2:00 PM. We will then operate throughout the night straight through to 2:00 PM Sunday.
Field Day is always a great event to come out and make new friends and share a weekend hamming with old ones. No experience is necessary and we welcome new people and anyone interested in ham radio to enjoy a weekend of radio fun, good food and great camaraderie. Please go to this link to sign up.
We will discuss this more at our club meeting as we also need more volunteers to help with the planning stage. Field Day is a team effort and the more people that participate, the more fun it is!
