Field Days

2011 Field Day Schedule (pretty much the same every year)

The purpose of Field Day is to demonstrate the communications ability of the amateur radio community in simulated emergency situations. Field Day is an opportunity for us to practice setting up our emergency radio equipment, to practice communication skills, educate the community about us, and to have fun using our radios. Field Day is always the last full weekend in June. This year Field Day weekend is June 27-28. Field Day is an event for all radio operators in the US, Canada, Mexico and all countries within IARU Region 2. The American Radio Relay League (ARRL), the national organization for Amateur Radio operators and affiliated clubs, sponsors Field Day and provides rules/guidelines for the activity. (www.arrl.org/contests/announcements/fd) One of the major guidelines for Field Day is to set up operations in a place where the public can observe the operators and the equipment in action.

Again Field Day will be at the Napoleon Township Offices grounds. The grass area to the west of the office and fire station building will be where CARS will set up and operate for Field Day. The Township has graciously agreed to this use.

What we do during Field Day
Radio operation during Field Day is defined as 24 hours of continuous radio operation starting at 2:00 p.m. local time on Saturday and ending at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday. We begin setting up our equipment at 9:00 a.m. local time. Equipment setup consists of erecting a 10'x20' canvas carport for light shelter from the sun/rain, erecting 3 antennas covering the frequencies we intend to operate on, setup up emergency power (gas generator) and cabling the power and antennas to our radio equipment. Once the equipment setup is completed, we operate our radios for the 24 hour period. We typically contact states and Canadian provinces from the east coast all the way through to the Rocky Mountain area. If conditions are favorable we will contact California and other west coast states and on rare occasions, Alaska. We stop radio operations at the end of the 24 hour period and take down the equipment that has been set up. One of our mottos is to "leave the area cleaner than when we started". Typically, we have completed teardown and packing of the equipment by 6:00 p.m.