June 25 - Field Day for Southern Sierra Amateur Radio Society

Members of the Tehachapi’s Southern Sierra Amateur Radio Society will be participating in the national Amateur Radio Field Day exercise, June 25 to 26 at Tehachapi’s Brite Lake, Pavilion 3 (courtesy of the Tehachapi Recreation and Parks Department). Setup will be complete and operations will begin at 11 a.m. on Saturday, June 25. Field Day is open to the public and all are encouraged to attend.

Amateur Radio — sometimes 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.

ARRL Field Day is the most popular annual on-the-air event in the US and Canada. More than 35,000 radio amateurs will gather with their clubs, groups or simply with friends to operate from remote locations. Ham radio operators will assemble temporary ham radio stations in public locations to showcase the science and skill of Amateur Radio. These same skills are used when Hams volunteer to help with community events such as marathons, bicycle races and off road rallies; fund-raisers such as walk-a-thons; celebrations such as parades; and exhibits at fairs, malls and museums. These are all large, preplanned, non-emergency activities that allow us to practice our operating skills so when an emergency does happen we are prepared.

Field Day is practice for emergencies. We set up our stations in less than optimal conditions, running them with emergency power. We then operate for 24 hours contacting as many stations as possible. Field Day demonstrates ham radio’s ability to work reliably under any conditions from almost any location and create an independent communications network.

Anyone can use a computer or smartphone, connect to the Internet and communicate, without knowing the details of how they work. However, when there is an interruption of these services there are limited options to communicate. An amateur radio station interfacing computers and smartphones can be assembled almost anywhere in minutes, functioning independently of these infrastructures. A wire can be thrown over a tree branch for an antenna, connected to an emergency powered transceiver and communicate around the world using layers of the ionosphere to reflect radio waves.

Amateur radio remains one of the best ways to learn about electronics, physics, meteorology, and many other sciences and is an asset to any community during disasters if the standard communication infrastructure goes down. Anyone can become a licensed Amateur Radio operator. There are over 725,000 licensed hams in the United States, as young as 5 and as old as 100. And with clubs such as Southern Sierra Amateur Radio Society, it’s easy for anybody to get involved right here in Tehachapi.

For more information about Field Day, contact Phil at mailto:[email protected] or visit http://www.arrl.org/what-is-ham-radio.