Montague County “hams” will join with thousands of amateur radio operations who will be showing off their emergency capabilities June 28-29.
This annual events called “Field Day” is the climax of a week-long “Amateur Radio Week” sponsored by the American Radio Relay League. In the Montague County area, the local radio club “MCARC” will be demonstrating amateur radio at the Montague County Courthouse Annex on June 28-29. They invite the public to come and see how ham radio’s new capabilities work and learn how to get their own FCC radio license before the next disaster strikes.
The demonstration will be 1 – 7 p.m. on June 28 and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on June 29.
During the past year the new has been full of reports of ham radio operators providing critical communications during unexpected emergencies in towns across America. During Hurricane Katrine, amateur radio – often called “hams” traveled south to save lives and property. When trouble is brewing, amateur radio’s people are often the first to provide rescuers with critical information and communications.
During the upcoming event, the public will have a chance to meet and talk with Montague County ham radio operators and see for themselves what the amateur radio service is about. Showing the latest in digital and satellite capabilities, voice communications and even historical Morse code, hams from across the USA will be conducting public demonstrations of emergency communications abilities.
Using only emergency power supplies, ham operators will construct emergency stations in parks, shopping malls, schools and back yards around the country. Their slogan, “Ham radio works when other systems don’t,” is more than just words to the hams as they prove they can send messages in many forms without the use of phone systems, internet or any other infrastructure that can be compromised in a crisis. More than 30,000 amateur radio operators across the country participated in last year’s event.
“We hope people will come and see for themselves. The communications ham radio people can quickly create have saved many lives when other systems failed or were overloaded. And besides that, it’s fun,” said Joe Ehlene, club president.
There are more than 650,000 amateur radio licenses in the U.S. and more than 2.5 million around the world. To learn more about amateur radio go to emergency-radio.org. Come learn more, they can even help you get on the air.